Part 8

"Yes, yes, a position to hold up. I must go where it concerns nobody if I am changed in purse. So to America I came, it is about two years since, and for one year I tr-ravelled everywhere to see where I liked best, and for the diversion also, for I was most sad. Then my money grew down so small that I saw I must stop, so to this lovely land I happened, and I bought my little farm. But, alas! I fear I am not a farmer. Still, I shall learn. I am determined of that."

"I'm sure you will. You haven't had a chance yet."

"And this year, what can I do? I am so misfortunate as to be away and sick at the time of planting."

"You won't be without some little return, for when we found that you would be ill so long we let your fields to two men who have planted them, and will pay you one-third of their crop of corn. That's the customary rent here, and it will keep your mule through next winter, at any rate."

"Now, that is truly kind and thoughtful. It is, indeed, fr-riendly!"

"You must thank Dr. Morgan for that arrangement."

Von Rittenheim sat erect and stared at the little old lady before him. A look of confused and struggling recollection was called into life by her words.

"I must thank--whom?"

The spirit of the gallant adventurer who had been Mrs. Carroll's immigrant ancestor to the Virginia wilds pushed her on to dare the situation. She also sat upright, and the two faced each other undauntedly.

"You must thank Dr. Morgan for that kindness, and for others even greater."

"Dr. Mor-rgan?"

Clearer remembrance brought with it the old feeling of suspicion and its accompanying look of hatred, which distorted Friedrich's handsome face.

"Yes, Dr. Morgan. I want you to listen to what I am going to tell you. You are well enough now to hear the truth."

"It is your right, madam, to say to me what you may like."

Von Rittenheim turned his stern face towards the training-field, and kept his eyes upon the moving forms that shifted below him.

Mrs. Carroll was unabashed.

"Dr. Morgan is an old and tried friend of mine and of all my family. He has seen life come and go at Oakwood. He rejoiced with us at Sydney's birth, and he was my chief help and support when her father and mother left us two here together, alone."

With a certain tenderness--the yearning that a man feels to protect the feeble and the helpless--Friedrich turned his softened eyes towards her.

"I tell you this because I can say truthfully that I know him to be faithful in friendship and incapable of treachery."

Friedrich turned again with tightened lips to his contemplation of the meadow.

"We heard of your being summoned to court and for what purpose."

Mrs. Carroll stopped, for a grayness settled over the young man's face, and the eyes that he turned upon hers were filled with horror.

"You had forgotten?"

"Yes, I had forgotten."

All the pride went out of him, as the fading of the sun's flush leaves the evening clouds without illumination and dull.

"I had for-rgotten, but now I r-remember. It comes back to me. Yes, now I r-remember all--all."

He turned away his face both from her and from the field below, and rested his cheek on his hand. Mrs. Carroll noticed the thinness of his wrist, and her heart misgave her.

"Shall I go on?"

"If it please you."

"Bob Morgan went into Asheville to follow your career in behalf of all your friends here."

Von Rittenheim's head fell lower.

"He was in the court-room when you were----"

The old lady hesitated and watched von Rittenheim sharply. She was doubtful of his strength after all.

"When I was--yes, continue, please," he said, with muffled voice.

"When you were sentenced."

She hastened on, pretending not to hear the groan that followed her revelation.

"He galloped out here at once as fast as he could, and told us about it--his father and me. He feared an illness for you then--you looked not yourself, he said. We decided that it was best for you to come here to Oakwood. We could not bear to think of your going to the hospital."

Friedrich felt vaguely across the table for the plump little hand of his hostess, and pressed it blindly.

"They drove into town that same afternoon, Dr. Morgan in our carriage, and Bob in his buggy, and found you in the--found you very ill."

"Found me where?"

"You were delirious even then."

"Found me where?"

Friedrich pushed aside the cups and placed both elbows on the table. He seemed to Mrs. Carroll to have grown haggard since she had begun her recital.

"Found me where?" he repeated for the third time.

"You insist?"

"It is my r-right."

"They found you in--in the jail."

Mrs. Carroll turned away from the wretched man before her and sobbed undisguisedly. On them fell a quiet pregnant with emotion. The hush was broken by the crash of a tea-cup upon which Friedrich's fingers had happened to fall.

"Bob secured the nurses and drove one of them out in the buggy, and the Doctor and the other one brought you in the carriage."

"Why did they let me go from the--jail?"

"The Doctor paid your fine."

Often during the preceding weeks Mrs. Carroll had thought of this conversation with von Rittenheim, and the statement that she had just made always had figured as the climax of her argument in the Doctor's behalf. Now she felt no pleasure in it. The man before her was too crushed for her to exult over. He made no comment, merely said, reflectively,--

"Yes, there was a fine. It comes to me,--'one hundred dollars or three months.' It is the last thing I r-remember."

"You were dangerously ill by the time you reached Oakwood, and for three days Dr. Morgan left you only to visit his other patients. Between the attacks of stupor you talked a great deal, usually in German, but occasionally in English. From what you said then, and what Dr. Morgan remembered of conversations you had had with him, and from what Bob learned in Asheville, we gathered that you thought that when Dr. and Mrs. Morgan met the marshal on the road after they had been to your house, they betrayed you to him, and your arrest was the consequence. Is that so?"

Von Rittenheim nodded. "Yes, it is so."

"I hope it will come to you as clearly as we see it who are the Doctor's friends, that he is incapable of such a thing."

"Dear lady, even already I think I see it. I r-remember darkly my trial; how the officer told of his trick to entr-rap me into selling. Ah, dear Mrs. Carroll, I was anxious to despair from my so unusual poverty, and I was hungry, and bitten with shame for my weakness--and hopeless."

Unconsciously his eyes turned to the field below, where Sydney's hair gleamed red bronze in the sunset light. She was dismissing the men and horses. A great wall seemed to von Rittenheim to spring up between them, a wall made thick by his folly, and high by his disgrace, and strong by his weakness.

"Though I am shameful to say such things as if they were excuses, nothing excuses me. I am without justification. I say so most humbly to you."

Weakly he leaned back among his cushions. Mrs. Carroll glanced at him and hurried on.

"When the first fury of the disease was spent, you seemed distressed at the sight of the Doctor, though you did not recognize him fully; so, though he has not failed to come here twice each day, it is through the nurses' reports and Bob's that he has been treating you. He can do so much better for you now if you will see him."

"If I will see him?" he repeated. "Yes, I can at least make some little amends for my folly--my distr-rust. But can I win back ever my self-r-respect, so that you and other people can r-respect me? So that----"

He stopped as Sydney's voice reached him. She was coming up the hill, laughing with Bob.

Von Rittenheim looked appealingly at Mrs. Carroll.

"Sydney," she called, "go on to the house, dear, with Bob, and send James here."

She rose and laid her hand tenderly on the bent head.

"Stay here a while. It is still quite warm enough for you."

She went slowly across the lawn and disappeared beneath the veranda's roses. A level ray from the setting sun touched Friedrich's fair hair with gold, and went on to be splintered into a thousand tiny shafts against the swelling side of the silver cream-jug.

XIII

Reconciliation

The sunshine of a clear June day was beating upon the gravel of the driveway, and a few woolly clouds, the forerunners of the early afternoon's daily shower, clung over the tops of the southern mountains.

Behind the screen of vines and climbing roses that sheltered the porch von Rittenheim sat reading a New York paper of two days before. It was the morning after his explanation with Mrs. Carroll, and the emotional outcome of the talk had been a state of abasement of soul that had sapped his little store of strength. His thin hands shook weakly, and he continually changed his position, and glanced expectantly at the long window which opened upon the gallery.

Sydney's voice inside the house made him clutch his paper nervously. She spoke loudly, as in warning.

"The Baron? You'll find him on the porch, Dr. Morgan. The nurse says he didn't sleep very well last night."

"He didn't? We must mend that." And the Doctor stepped from the window and approached his long-unseen patient.

Von Rittenheim looked up into the wrinkled brown face with its shrewd, kind eyes, and covered his own eyes with his hand.

"You know?" he asked, brokenly. "Mrs. Carroll has told you?" He felt his other hand taken into a cordial grasp.

"Mrs. Carroll has told me that she has described to you all the happenings of yo' illness that had escaped yo' attention, so to speak. Curious troubles, these brain affairs, aren't they? Make you feel as if you'd been on an excursion outside of yo'self for a while, and had to hear all the home news when you got back."

Von Rittenheim grew composed as the Doctor rambled on.

"She has not told you," he said, insistently, "of my so deep r-regret for the injustice that I made towards you. I can never do atonement for my br-rutal behavior, for my unjust suspiciousness. That you can take my hand shows much par-rdon in you."

"Now, don't talk about that any more, Baron. It ain't worth it," Dr. Morgan replied, awkwardly. "Ah don't guess that circumstances looked very favorable to me. Anyway, you-all can please me best now by doing credit to my doctoring skill. Quit having the appearance of a skeleton just as quick as you can."

"I'll try," answered Friedrich, meekly.

"And don't worry too much over what's gone by," went on the Doctor, clumsily. "Breaking the law's breaking the law, Ah'm not denying that; but it makes a lot of difference what the motive is, and you've suffered your share of punishment, too. It's the right of every man to begin afresh. Avoid mud and give yo' horse a firm take-off, and he'll leap as clean as a whistle for you. Lawd, Ah'm getting plumb religious," he ejaculated, wiping his face.

Friedrich's knowledge of English was put to a test, but he listened with his eyes as well as his ears, and nodded slowly.

"I think I understand," he said. "But do you think that people--my fr-riends"--his eyes turned towards the house--"that my friends can overlook it--can ever think of me as they used to think of me?"

"Oh, I reckon she will," replied Dr. Morgan, with a smile that disconcerted von Rittenheim and drove him to a new topic.

"You will for-rgive me if I do talk some business with you," he said, hastily.

"Do you feel well enough?"

"Oh, yes. I shall feel much better when I have cleared my mind of all these things. I want to say to you that I do much appr-reciate, also, besides your kindness, all the money that you have paid, and--no, let me talk, please, Herr Doctor--and I must tell you that I shall write to-day to Germany for a r-remittance. There is a sum which I can have. Yes, I see you look, wondering that I have lived so poor. Well, I explain to you that I have sworn that I would not use it for myself--I have another use for it--so long as I am well and can earn enough for living; but now I am not well, and I have expenses in the past weeks, and I must live until I grow str-rong to work in some way; so am I justified to myself to send for the money, you see."

"Fix it any way you like," said the Doctor, cheerily, "only remember that if it ain't convenient to pay up _ever_,--why, just banish it from your mind, and Ah'll never think of it again, Ah promise you. Now, is that all?" he asked, as he leaned towards his patient and put a practised finger on his pulse. "Yes? Then Ah'd like to know where that Sydney is with that egg-nog. Here, you Sydney," he cried, putting his head into the house and letting his cracked voice echo into the darkness. "What kind of a nurse are you? How do you expect to rise in the profession, miss, if you don't have an egg-nog ready the instant yo' patient happens to think of it? Oh, here you are! Well, sit down here, then, and see that the Baron takes every drop of that, and don't tire him out with yo' chatter. Do you understand?"

After which burst he kissed her, and disappeared into the house. Sydney turned blushing to the Baron, and laughed at his wistful look.

"Age has its compensations," he said, as he took the tumbler from her. "But I do not begrudge the good Doctor all the happiness that comes to him. He is a most generous man."

"He's a darling!"

"A darling? Ah, yes. I should not have used that word for _him_, but I agree with the sentiment."

"You are critical this morning. Don't you ever allow yourself any liberty of speech in German? Do you always say exactly what you mean, and use exactly the right word?"

"Oh, Miss Sydney, you describe to me a pig--no, a pr-rig person. Surely I use many picture words in my thinking of--well, just to illustrate what I mean, I will say, in my thinking of _you_!"

Sydney moved her position so that her face was partly hidden behind the back of the Baron's wheeled chair.

"Now, there is _Schatz_," went on Friedrich, sipping his egg-nog placidly, but keeping a wary eye upon the bit of pink cheek that was still within his range of vision. "I like to think of you as _Schatz_,"--there was a danger-betokening movement of the glowing head,--"because you are such a treasure to your grandmother."

He paused a moment, but there was no reply.

"And _Perle_--it is a pretty word, _Perle_--it makes you to think of the r-radiance of the moon, so pure, so soft. Yes," he went on, hastily, "_Perle_ r-rhymes with _Erle_--that means an alder-tree--and that r-reminds me of you."

"I must say I fail to see the resemblance," came an injured voice from behind the chair.

"Not see? Oh, Miss Sydney, surely--with your cleverness! Listen to this, then; perhaps you like it better that I call you my--I mean _a_--_Rose_."

"That's because my hair is red."

"It is a white r-rose that always figures in my mind. A beautiful white r-rose with a heart of gold."

By a dexterous touch upon one wheel he whirled his chair about so that he saw her downcast face.

"A heart full of goodness to others is it, and of courage, and of love."

He was leaning eagerly towards her. She lifted her eyes with an effort, and met his. Then he remembered.

"Yes," he continued, hurriedly, "full of love for the poor and the desolate."

Sydney rose.

"Your pretty figures do me too much honor," she said, unsteadily, and went into the house with lingering tread and look.

Friedrich gazed after her.

"God knows I would be counted among the poor and the desolate," he cried, softly, to himself. "But I must not speak again of this until I am more worthy to stand before her--if ever that can be!"

XIV

The Fourth of July

That the settle-_ment_ celebrated the Fourth of July was not due to an exuberance of patriotism, but to the mercantile spirit of Uncle Jimmy's son, Pete.

Pete was married, and lived in one of the cottages on the Oakwood estate, where he worked intermittently, sandwiching between thin slices of manual labor thick layers of less legitimate emprise.

Independence Day, as the anniversary of the birth of our country's liberty, is not celebrated with enthusiasm in the South. It meets with more cordial acceptance when regarded as another opportunity for knocking off work.

Pete's plan catered to all conditions of conscience, from the seared commodity that asked no excuse for playing to the scrupulous article that considered justification necessary, and found it in the infrequency of such amusement.

He advertised far and wide, by placards in the scattered stores and post-offices that cling near the railway stations and dot the Haywood Road on the other side of the river, a--

GANDER PULIN FORTH OF JULY AT 5 OCLOCK. FRADYS FEILD.

"I always make a point of going to these outdoor gatherings of the country people," explained Mrs. Carroll to the Baron, as they drove towards the field. "I think they like to have me."

Von Rittenheim had insisted upon going home to his cabin a few days before, since which time the old lady had missed him grievously. He was not yet strong enough to take the five-mile ride to Oakwood on his mule, and she had made the gander-pulling an excuse to go to his cabin to see how his housekeeping was progressing, and to take him for a drive.

"We don't have gander-pullings often now, since the law requires that the fowl shall be dead," she explained. "It demands less skill to break the poor thing's neck when it isn't writhing wildly."

"And it does not r-rouse the br-rutal desire to kill that seems to live in every one of us men. Will Miss Sydney be there?"

"Yes, she is going on horseback--"

"Ah!"

"--with John Wendell."

"Eh?"

"You didn't meet them--John and Katrina Wendell--when they were here in the spring. They went North again not long after you came to Oakwood."

"Oh, dear madam, I do so earnestly hope that my going to Oakwood did not depr-rive you of more welcome guests."

"Not the least in the world. They went back to New York to put the crown to a pretty romance."

"A love-story!"

"Katrina was sent down here, under her brother's care, to forget a certain Tom Schuyler, whom her mother considered impossible because he was penniless."

"The poor but honest suitor."

"A poor but lavish suitor would describe him better. It seems that an aunt of his was moved to give him a present of five hundred dollars. He says that he had just paid his tailor's bill as a concession to his desire to _range_ himself, and he really didn't know what to do with the money. It wasn't enough to get anything really nice with,--he'd been trying to make his father give him an automobile,--unless it were a ring for Katrina. He concluded, however, that Mrs. Wendell would object to her daughter's accepting it, and that he might as well take a little flyer with it."

"Take--what is that?"

"Speculate--in stocks."

"And he made his for-rtune?"

"No, on the contrary. He took his father's advice about his purchase, and lost his five hundred dollars within twenty-four hours."

"Then wherefr-rom came his good luck? For surely I perceive the pr-resence of good luck."

"His father was so remorseful over his poor counsel, and so delighted with Tom's apparent desire to 'settle down,' that he made amends for his unfortunate 'tip' by giving his son a very decent sum of money."

"It is like a story, is it not? So the brother and sister went up from here to the wedding."

"It was only a few days ago, and now Tom and Katrina have come to us on their _Hochzeitreise_."

"And the brother?"

Mrs. Carroll glanced amusedly at her companion.

"He came to-day on the afternoon train, to continue the visit which Katrina insisted on shortening for him in May, he says."

"You will enjoy them."

Friedrich's tone was not enthusiastic, and he pulled his moustache gloomily.

"Very much. They are charming young people. See, there are Tom and Katrina now, just turning into the field."

Von Rittenheim raised his hat as Mrs. Schuyler waved her hand to Mrs. Carroll, and studied critically the bride's radiant face and pretty gown as the victoria followed the phaeton through the opened fence-rails. He found her charming and acknowledged it reluctantly, not because he begrudged her her beauty, nor because he thought her handsomer than Sydney, for he did not, but because he had a secret fear of the attractiveness of the brother of so fascinating a girl.

"Tom," said Mrs. Carroll, as Mrs. Schuyler came to the side of the carriage, "I want you to know my very dear friend, Baron von Rittenheim--Mr. Schuyler. Now take the Baron over to Katrina, Tom, and then find Mrs. Morgan,--that's she in the red-wheeled buggy,--and beg her to come and sit with me here. Vandeborough," to the coachman, "drive me under that apple-tree, where there is more shade. How do you do, Eliza?" she said to a woman by whom the carriage slowly passed; "I'm glad to see you out to-day. And you, Mary. Jack Garren, is that you? You grow too fast for my memory. Ah, Jane, I hope your rheumatism is better,--and is that Mattie's Bertha? Stop here, Vandeborough. This will be comfortable. Ah, Mrs. Morgan, it is kind of you to make me a little visit, but I couldn't possibly climb into that buggy of yours. I don't know how you achieve it."

"Nor do Ah, Mrs. Carroll. Ah thought it was high five years ago, when Ah didn't consider mahself overly fat, so you can imagine what the effort is now." And she shook jovially.

"Is the Doctor here?"

"Yes, indeed. He drove me. He always comes to these things. They generally need him before they get through, and it often saves him a long trip into the mountains if he's on the spot when things happen."

"I dare say his presence prevents a good many quarrels."

"Maybe so; but Ah should hate to have any mo' fights than there are. There's always whisky about, you know."

"If the chief crop of this country could be changed, what a blessing it would be!"

"Ah don't know as it would make much difference as long as potatoes were left."

"And thirst."

"There's Bob now. O-oh, Bob!" she called, waving a fat hand to her son as he cantered across the open on his gray.

Bob looked about for the source of the call, and turned his horse towards the tree.

"He's growing handsome, Mrs. Morgan," said Mrs. Carroll, in an undertone, as the tall fellow leaped to the ground, slipped the bridle over his arm, and pulled off his cap.