CHAPTER XVI

Desmond had never experienced such dejection as now overwhelmed his spirits. He could not rally from it. He could not understand it. He had recovered from the strain of the physical fatigue, even from the stress of excitement. He had permitted little interruption to his pedagogic duties, and the routine of the schoolroom continued in force as regular as if no river pirates had ever assailed the house, and died in the commission of the intended robbery; as if no coroner’s jury had ever grimly deliberated on the veranda; as if no codicil of the will had ever been found to reverse all the orderly status with a presage of future financial chaos.

“We will take care of to-day,” Desmond had said to his restive, unsettled, agitated pupils, “and to-morrow will take care of itself.”

They were docile under his admonition, but he could not so easily press its sage philosophy upon himself. Now and again he struggled with this gloom when he was sufficiently at leisure to cope with it. He had been fortunate beyond any reasonable expectation, considering his status, he argued. In lieu of the position of a tolerated necessity in the house, a tutor to boys remote from schools, he had been treated first with respect and courtesy, then as a valued guest, made as one of the family, and now as the predominant controlling element, from whose decree there was no appeal. More and more did Mr. Bainbridge, with his papers, and a furtive eye, and a deprecating hand laid over his mouth, as if resolved to keep his conjectures from going further than his mustache, come directly to Desmond, to take his advice, as he said, in fact to secure the annulment of some impracticable order, or to obviate unwise dispositions of Mrs. Faurie’s in the readjustment of the wrecked plantation interests. He did not directly bespeak Desmond’s influence. He only showed the papers and set forth the facts, coughed discreetly behind his hand, and if securing Desmond’s promise to place the matter before Mrs. Faurie, would set forth confident and alert, acting on the rescission of the order as if it were received; for whatever Mr. Desmond undertook at Great Oaks Plantation was regarded as _un fait accompli_. The attitude of the servants toward him for some time past was compounded of a deep respect and some real liking, influencing swift feet and dexterous hands and willing smiles in his service. “He is a man, shore!” was the general comment. His pupils first obeyed, then esteemed, and now adored him, using their utmost diligence to win the meed of his approval. Even they, he thought, noted his gloom, which he could not disguise, and which rested upon his aspect as definitely as a pall. He lost his readiness to sleep, which, since he had become content in a measure with his lot, he had recovered—in his youthful health and vitality. Long, long after the house was lapsed in slumber, he would linger in a reclining-chair at his window, the candle burning down to the socket, his fingers in the pages of an unread book, looking out dully at the lustrous scene, now grown so familiar, of the expanse of gray, shimmering water under the white moon and the faint stars, while all the room about him dulled to indiscriminate gloom and the hours wore on and on toward dawn.

What was this obsession? he sometimes angrily asked himself. Why should he wince in poignant pain at the very thought of the tender music in Honoria Faurie’s voice as she sobbed amidst joy and laughed amidst sorrow, in the blended ecstasy and woe in reading her husband’s letter, so replete with his love and thought for her? Was he jealous of the dead man—dead these seven long years!—the dead man he had never seen? And how did her tears and smiles concern him,—whom she deemed but a boy,—at whom she looked with such sweet, maternal eyes? Sometimes he felt that he was losing his reason. Why should this evidence of her love for the dead man who had been her husband set an exquisite pain a-quiver in his every fibre? Had he thought she had forgotten—that were not to her credit. Did he fear that if the dead still lived so in her heart there was no place in her affections for him? And why had he ever hoped this? And when, indeed, had he first thought of it? There had grown up in his mind so gradually from admiration of her beauty, from approval of her standpoint, from confidence in her principles, from interest in the disclosures of her charming mind, an absolute adoration so complete, so possessive, that he was hardly aware of it until it absorbed him wholly. He had no more identity of his own. He existed only in relation to her. The fact became apparent to him as he reviewed the last few months. He had come here penniless, as a tutor to teach her sons, mere children, to do designated work; he had stipulated and stood stoutly on these limits, defining exactly what were to be his duties, that he might not be called upon to exceed them, to become an overworked, underpaid drudge, with such expenditure of vitality that he might be unable to rise to higher things.

He recurred no more to these limitations. He controlled the boys in school and out, laying commands upon them with paternal freedom, restricting dangerous amusements, interdicting prejudicial reading, requiring salutary exercise, cutting off amusing associates sometimes, for no better reason than that their conversation tended to impair the grammar and parlor manners of his youthful charges,—all of which was out of his contract and beyond the bailiwick of his authority.

He had been inducted into even more exacting occupations. He had become the referee in all matters of dispute about the place, which required some nicety of discrimination; he was often put into a position of extreme doubt and embarrassment in deciding the small property interests between servants or the plantation hands, who had agreed together to abide by his decision, thus exerting, indeed, the functions of justice. Mrs. Faurie consulted him in business correspondence. He had been led, by the turn of events, to risk his life in defense of the mansion and to hold it out in a state of siege. He had kept up the good cheer by his genial arts, and preserved the calmness of all in the house that dreadful night when, but for his stanch composure and his resources of management, they might have fallen victims to causeless fright and ghastly horror in their isolation, and become the wreck of their own nerves in lieu of passing the ordeal with no result but the confirmation of their powers and their confidence in themselves. It was he who had conferred with the county officials by letter and in person when they came to the house. Mrs. Faurie and the younger boys had been spared the ghastly details of the inquest through his representations to the coroner, and were busied in a rear room opening some boxes of potted plants for the approaching summer decoration of the veranda, which had been shipped by the packet opportunely passing on this morning, and which he contrived should be brought off in a skiff simultaneously to the house; thus they were not aware of the event in progress till the inquisition was concluded. His own testimony, that of Reginald and Mr. Stanlett, the confessions of the wounded man, who died later the same day, the corroborative details of the servants as to the subsequent events, were deemed ample evidence, and the verdict of the jury was in accordance with the facts.

He had solved the mystery of the spectral manifestations that had terrorized the house for years; he had secured the cache from its possible wresting away by vandal hands; he was her confidant and counselor in all the troublous forecast of the complications to ensue upon the propounding of the codicil.

Surely these were the services of no hireling. They were the cheerful tribute of love that found danger dear for her behoof, and toil light, and the tangles of perplexity easy of unraveling since she might elude their intricacies, and responsibility a broadening of the shoulders, and his day all too short for its devotion to her interests.

And to her—he seemed but a boy! a mere springald out of college, glad to teach for a time,—to repeat his own lessons recently conned as a stepping-stone to a man’s devoir.

And yet—he looked at the long lane of light, the mystic avenue of the moon on the water in the glade between the lines of inundated trees. What alluring dreams, what soft deceits were coming to him along that roadway of shimmering pearl,—coming to him from the moon, the home of fantasies, to which it stretched at the limits of the perspective. Did she know her own heart? She had no mind but his. She adopted his views, and deferred her preferences, and abated her prejudices. He had no need to care for his dignity; she was quicker than he to resent aught that seemed to touch upon it. The whole house, the whole plantation, was relegated to his control. She seemed in a hundred ways to ask his permission,—might she do this? might the boys have that? She said that day,—that dreadful day,—when he and Reginald held her in their arms between them, that she had longed for him, that she had prayed for him. How strange that the bell, which had never rung through all the gloomy day, sounded her signal for him so far away! How was it that his ears quickened to a peal that had never vibrated,—that her wishes, her prayers, drew him from far, through sloughs and slashes, through bayous and lakes, to her side at her utmost, her extremest peril! And why for him had she prayed! She knew that the time set for his return was yet two days distant. The manager was overdue, however, and momently expected. She had not contemplated the coming of Mr. Bainbridge, a stalwart fellow and eminently capable of coping with these familiar conditions. She had not thought that a steamboat might chance to pass and discern and respond to a signal of distress. She had longed for Desmond—for _him_, as the protecting ægis in all her frenzied terror. And love—mysterious love—had clamored at his ears, annulled the distance, shaken the fogs, penetrated the rains, defied, set at naught plain fact, and sounded her summons, her wish, her frantic hope, till he needs must have heed and respond. It was strange, the accord between them. Surely, surely she did not translate aright the tenor of her own emotions.

Suddenly he noticed that the mystic illuminated avenue of pearly, shimmering waters between the giant oaks was dulling: a sort of gloating glister grew golden upon it; vague yearnings were in the air; unseen beings descended continually, their presence demonstrated only by the sense of motion. A wind from out the moon ruffled the surface into thousands of tiny wavelets, like twinkling feet half discerned. Fancies!—fancies hastening down, lest dawn come too soon, cut off communication with the ideal, and leave the poor world the prey, the possession of the prosaic. For, indeed, the light was fading to a glimmering steel, and now to an unillumined gray, and as he rose at last to seek an hour’s repose before the household should rouse for the day, he realized that with his griefs and anxieties, his fears and his waking dreams, he had worn the night away.

He did not mistake the character of his emotions—they were strictly paternal!—when it developed in the next few days that Reginald, of his own motion, had written, unknown to all but his brothers, a letter to the executor of the will, Mr. Hartagous, a lawyer of Memphis. The others had signed it, and thus unified the solemn requirement that in the execution of the newly discovered codicil he should make no demands upon their mother for the return to the estate of the funds that she had spent under the provisions of the will as hitherto in force, and now to be charged against her portion. It seemed that they had at first appealed to their guardian, Mr. Keith, who had declined the discussion by stating that the distribution of the property was wholly in the hands of the executor. Therefore they called the attention of Mr. Hartagous to the fact that they were the owners of the estate in his hands, and claimed that they had a right to waive this demand upon their mother, against which they protested, and to impose upon him their command. It would be contrary to the wishes of the testator, their father, they argued, to impoverish for a legal quibble the widow and mother; and even if they should restore to her—as they were fully resolved to do, as soon as the eldest came of age—anything that was taken from her, that was a distant date, and she would spend the best years of her life in poverty, restricted and deprived of the comfort and luxury to which she was accustomed. If the executor should persist in enforcing the codicil, the letter sternly concluded, it would be their resolve to seek to visit their wrath upon him, as his evil deed merited.

This truculent epistle came back to Great Oaks inclosed in a letter from Mr. Hartagous to Mrs. Faurie. Their sentiments did them honor, he declared, overlooking the puerile violence of their menace, and this heralded the coming of Mr. Hartagous to Great Oaks for a conference in the changed state of things.

The Faurie boys were somewhat startled to see their valiant demonstration in the hands of their mother, who kissed and hugged and wept over them till they, too, shed tears as they clung together.

“But will he, mamma, will he make you pay us all that money?” asked Reginald, leaning over the back of her chair and gripping hard the hand that she held up to him.

“Oh, what a pity we are all so young,” plained Horace,—“so many years before we can give it back.” He knelt by her side and sobbed against her shoulder.

Chubby sunk from her lap to the floor and clung to her, hugging her knees. “Oh, mamma, will you be poor till I am a man? Oh, I will work for you, mamma. I will—I will—I will dig in the garden.”

Reginald and Horace had no laugh to-day for Chub’s unintentional anticlimaxes, and as Mrs. Faurie sent them away, that she might consult with Desmond, they carried very dreary countenances, and she still pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.

“It is not as if the money were going to strangers,” said Desmond, craftily. “It will only advantage those dear fellows. I am so delighted with that letter of Reginald’s.”

“I didn’t realize that it was in him to do that,” she said, suddenly smiling radiantly.

“I did,” said Desmond, promptly.

“I believe you love him as much as I do,” she cried joyously.

“All three,” he protested. “I am jealous for the others.”

“Poor little Chubby,” she said, lingering lovingly on the words.

“Dear old Chubby!” he exclaimed. “So you need not mind about the money. It is for them.”

“But how am I to get it, Edward?” She drew her level brows together in her pretty frown. “You have no idea of the clip I went, spending money. I can see now the awful mistake I made; but it seemed not so unreasonably extravagant then, having a large income at my disposal for my lifetime, and my children all independently and handsomely provided for. And now,—to return all that money! And that man is coming! I have been staying here to economize, you know, to get the old place to take care of me till the reservoir fills up again.”

“You have something to show for the money, I suppose. Didn’t those wretches mention some famous emeralds?”

“Ye-es,—but don’t you think it _infra dig._ to sell jewelry?”

“It is _infra dig._ not to have money,” he said bitterly.

Ah, how he wished that he were adequately equipped to come to her rescue; to let her relinquish to the Faurie estate all that the name had brought her; to offer commensurate resources.

“I do not agree with you,” she said firmly, “_You_ have no money, and you can discount the world for dignity.”

He had never regarded himself in this light, and he flushed with pleasure. As her eyes rested on him she suddenly exclaimed: “Now you look a little bit like yourself. This torment is telling more on you than on me. I assure you that _I_ shall not let myself go off in _my_ looks for a few dollars, dimes, cents, and mills.”

“About the emeralds?”

“Beauty when unadorned with emeralds is as green as grass. But needs must—let them go! Let them go!”

“Do you love them so much?” he said wistfully.

“You just ought to see them on me!” she bridled.

“They will never be the same on any one else,” he hazarded.

“And that is one comfort,” she acceded. Her pride in the preëminence of her attractions was like the innocent vanity of a child, so entirely was her beauty acknowledged and a matter of course.

“What will they bring at a forced sale?”

“Thirty thousand dollars, they cost.”

Desmond jotted down the sum and then went on. “About the yacht?”

“The yacht? Must it be sold? Why, what will we do in the Mediterranean?”

Obviously, she did not understand the situation. It must be brought home to her. He waved his hand to the waters of the overflow shimmering just outside the veranda balustrade. A dugout was rocking at a little distance. “There are all your facilities for voyaging for some time to come, Mrs. Faurie.”

She burst into laughter at the incongruity. Then she said, “I cannot realize that it is so serious as all that. My yacht is a beauty, and ought to bring a pretty penny.”

“Perhaps you will also have to give up the title to Great Oaks, which the codicil gives you in fee, to make good the sums which you have received from the estate,” he ventured.

Her face fell. “I have begun to love this life,” she declared unexpectedly. “I don’t want to change. I don’t want to give up Great Oaks. I have forgotten the world.”

A thrill stole through his heart. What had she said? She did not understand her own heart!