CHAPTER XX
It was a joyous household the next morning, and Mr. Hartagous genially participated in the prevailing good cheer. He had very heartily deprecated the hardships to be wrought by the execution of his duty, and was thankful indeed that they were mitigated to the extent of the benefactions of this codicil. Great Oaks under water, with valuable machinery and livestock, miles of fencing and indispensable buildings, to replace, was no boon in comparison with Mrs. Faurie’s former rich endowments, but at all events it was not to fall to his lot to turn the widow out of her shelter for the behoof of her young sons. Nevertheless, he resolved to remonstrate very seriously with her against the proposed marriage, and to stint himself no whit in forceful phraseology.
He did not meet her at the breakfast-table, for he was late, owing to the vigils of the preceding night, and when he presented himself to partake of the matutinal meal, he found that she had already departed, leaving him to the vicarious hospitality of Desmond, the jubilant Mr. Stanlett, and the three boys with their shining morning faces. He fortified himself with a good cigar after breakfast and a meditative stroll upon the veranda in the fresh, breezy, summery day, intending that his nerves should be well soothed and his tact whetted before he should enter upon his delicate mission.
The leafage of the wide-spreading grove was green and lush, and waved gilded in the sunlight; hanging baskets, with trailing ferns and laden with parti-colored foliage plants, swung in the arches between the vine-draped columns of the veranda. If one could imagine one’s self afloat, or in some Venetian entourage, the diluvian scene might have seemed, instead of the dreariest expression of disaster, to have elements of picturesque amphibious interest. What though the Arkansas shore were withdrawn from view—there was not much of it visible in its best estate!—and instead was an expanse of rippling sunlit sea of indefinite bounds, of a richly tawny hue, and with enlivening and unique incidents,—a couple of gayly whisking dugouts in the foreground, a steamboat in the middle distance, puffing columns of curling smoke as in the centre of the channel she steadily climbed the current, and in the offing a white flash of sea-gulls, describing eccentric curves, brilliant as stars against the depressed horizon, blue and hazy and dimly discriminated. There was an absence of briny odors, which are not always acceptable, however, and instead a pungent fragrance of bark came from the inundated woods, and the honeysuckle twining about the balustrade and bravely blooming from out the floods sent forth a subtile and delicious perfume.
“‘A life on the ocean wave,’” Mrs. Faurie exclaimed joyously, as he turned a corner and came suddenly upon her. She had been rifling a wire flower-stand that lifted its redundant growths against the wall of the house, and she held in her hand a cluster of pink and white carnations. As she stood in the blended sheen of the bland day and the refulgent reflection of the blazing waters, she looked not unlike the bloom itself. She had upon her head a wide hat of delicate pink organdy, the brim variously bent and shirred and frilled, and her morning dress was of sheer white lawn. He strove within himself to avoid its recognition as the simplest toilet, such as any country girl might wear, for she took no grace from it, but embellished its every suggestion. Her slim, lissome figure lent it such distinction; the exquisite fairness of her complexion was so emphasized by the unrelenting clarity of the tints of her costume; the shoaling lights and shadows of her beautiful gray eyes, her rich brown hair piled high amongst the carnation-like frills of the hat, her delicate dewy lips, her dainty hand and arm and throat, all were more assertive in their demand for homage in the simple not to say stereotyped attire. And she looked scarcely twenty years old, as her laughing, long-lashed eyes met his.
“Can you keep your sea-legs in the contemplation of that weltering main?”—she glanced at the waterscape. “Will you feel less as if in an indigestible dream and more like a landlubber if I give you a boutonnière?” She selected a very perfect carnation from the cluster, and as she advanced to place it in the buttonhole of his coat, he caught her hand with the flower in it.
“I want to say something very serious to you,” he protested. “I want to speak as freely to you as if you were my daughter.”
She glanced up, gayly laughing. “Your sister, you should say.”
He perceived his error,—on the very point of age, which was to be the gravamen of his remonstrances! But he had unconsciously been allured by her aspect,—as she looked scarcely twenty.
“Well, hardly young enough to be my daughter, indeed,” he said craftily, “though Desmond is really young enough to be my son. My dear madam, you will make yourself a laughing-stock if you contemplate this marriage. You ought to remember that you are ten years older than this boy.”
“Should I mind that if he does not?” she queried, holding up the cluster of carnations no fresher than the flush in her cheeks.
“And now that, by the grace of God, you are to have Great Oaks unincumbered, you will put him into the position of making a mercenary marriage; he is sensitive on that score,—I can see that already,—though of course he is glad that your future comfort is assured, however meagrely in comparison with the old days.”
“But ought we to consider the public,—if it will accord us so much distinction as to gossip about us as a nine days’ wonder,—or only ourselves, and our own mutual happiness?” She slipped the carnation into his buttonhole and drew off, standing in her graceful slimness, her head aslant, to observe the effect.
“Ridicule deals a vicarious stab, which is peculiarly sharp. You should consider your children, dear Mrs. Faurie,” he urged.
“And I will,” she promised heartily. “Trust me for that! I will do nothing contrary to their wishes.”
He made no secret of his intentions. He turned at once. She stood looking after him, smiling at his haste, as he went bustling down the veranda to find the boys. His method of busy progression was not unlike that of the puffing steamboat in the channel, bustling up the river. Though he had no fear of her interference or adverse influence, he was so impressed with the importance of his mission to enlist some potent opposition to the marriage that he made no effort to enliven the seriousness of the crisis with jocose preamble, in view of the juvenile character of his interlocutors, or to minimize its significance. In logical and definite fashion he set forth the fact and its aspect to the world at large, with its effect on their mother’s future and their own, in very unvarnished phrase. They silently heard him out, seated before him in a row on the sofa in the front parlor, very attentive, and with more friendly faces than he had heretofore seen them wear.
“It rests with you three,” he said in conclusion, seeking to impress them with a sense of their responsibility. “Your mother cares more for you than she ever did or ever will for any man. She is the most maternal woman I ever knew. You can prevent her from making a ridiculous marriage,—a foolish marriage,—a disastrous marriage, that will bring unhappiness upon everybody connected with it.”
“Oh, no! Mr. Hartagous!” promptly responded the rosy and beaming Chub, taking the pas, perhaps instinctively on the principle that the youngest officer on a court-martial speaks first. “It is the very best thing that we can do. Ever since I have found out that Mr. Desmond was going to marry us, I have felt that we-all were so safe!” He gave himself an affectionate little hug to express his sense of security.
Horace administered a rude nudge with his elbow. “Nobody is going to marry _you_!” he admonished his junior, shamefaced for the ignorance he manifested.
“Oh, yes,” protested Chub, wagging his round head, evidently having mastered the situation; “when a gentleman marries a widow lady, he marries the whole family!”
“You certainly have an interest to consider,” said Mr. Hartagous, gravely. “Your affection for your mother, your respect for your father, ought to urge you to a course of discreet remonstrance,—nothing unfilial, or likely to estrange you, but to prevent an absurd and most unseemly marriage that must necessarily be, too, unhappy and unfortunate.”
“I don’t see it in that light, Mr. Hartagous,” said Horace, slowly. His face had an intimation of precocious force, and there was even a mutinous spark in the glance of his eye. His was the complex and difficult disposition of the three brothers. His convictions were obviously strong, and his opposition likely to be of a strenuous order. Mr. Hartagous hearkened with an access of attention. “I don’t see it that way. I think that Mr. Desmond cares more for her and for us than anybody else ever will. I think his proposal when he had reason to think her fairly bankrupt shows that he was willing to make every sacrifice for her. Then look at him! Why, you are obliged to see that he is head and shoulders above anybody—though he is not rich. But he is younger, just as you say, though he does not _seem_ young. He is old in mind and disposition. And Lord! the heaps he knows about everything! As to your fear about what people will say,—well, _I_ have seen a lot of the world, and it seems to me that if a certain kind of people don’t laugh at you for one thing, they will for another. If you stay at home, they call you ‘a swamper’; if you travel abroad, they call you a ‘globe-trotter’; if you dress well, they ridicule you as ‘a dude’; if you take it easy, they say you are ‘tacky.’ _My_ idea is to go right ahead and do what you think is right and properest, and—let them laugh! I’d hate to deny myself anything good and valuable ’cause Mrs. Kentopp might giggle over it.”
“She left us out of her house-party,—and we ain’t dead yet!” said Chub, banging the heels of his shoes back and forth against the sofa.
Reginald took a deeper view. “I think, sir, that her happiness ought to be considered first. She is young, after all is said, and has many years yet to live, I hope. She ought to have her independence,—to be a free agent! When I was in India, there had been a recent case of suttee way off somewhere in some remote district,—I heard a great deal of talk about it. People had supposed the practice was suppressed. And without meaning any disrespect to my father’s will,—for I can understand how the idea of a stranger in the family circle would influence a division of property,—I always thought an objection to second marriage was a sort of civilized suttee. As to Mr. Desmond, himself, I should prefer him as a stepfather to all the world.”
And thus Desmond was welcomed without a dissentient voice.
At first Mrs. Kentopp, who might be taken as representing the gossips at large, was so rejoiced that Great Oaks Plantation would not come immediately on the market in competition with Dryad-Dene that it mitigated the acerbity of her views, and although she twinkled and dimpled much in commenting on the disparity in age and fortune and prospects of the couple, her talk had not the rancor which it developed later when Mr. Loring seemed indisposed to console himself with Dryad-Dene, and gradually drew off without making any offer.
A golden era of happiness had dawned on Great Oaks; the waters of the overflow gradually disappeared, and during the brief interval of the wedding journey Mrs. Kentopp drove over through the mud, bogging down once or twice in the alluvial sloughs, on a tour of discovery, and recounted with facetious distortions of effect afterward Chub’s simple boastings in great pride as to the preparations that were making for the reception of the couple on their return. Mr. Stanlett had designed and supervised these, and was very important and happily busy. “I hope he furnished the money to pay for the changes, for otherwise I don’t see where it was to come from, for Desmond must have put all his pedagogic savings in the expense of the bridal tour,” she jovially speculated. Great Oaks was very judiciously embellished, and looked most genially hospitable on the day of her visit, for the old man had a pretty fancy and an accurate discrimination of the appropriate.
“I always said there was another will or codicil, or, to be accurate, ‘paper-writing,’” he cheerily averred, as he handed Mrs. Kentopp into her carriage. “This is not of course the provision that was intended for Honoria, but it passes,—it passes fairly well, and Edward, my nephew, Mr. Desmond, you know, does not care for money.”
And when Mrs. Kentopp repeated this, she was wont to point out gayly the incongruity of this statement with the fact that “Edward,” Mr. Stanlett’s “nephew,” should have contrived to surround himself comfortably with that useful commodity in a wife so well endowed and three very rich stepsons, over whom he had now paramount influence. She found much joy, also, in Horace’s simplicity in believing that the sentimental interests between the two had been settled before the discovery of the last codicil which had put a new aspect on the financial status, and she sought to convince people in Deepwater Bend and elsewhere that the comfortable estate, more than the phenomenal beauty of the lady, had served to obviate the disadvantage of the disparity of years.
Prosperity supplemented happiness. There was a great crop of cotton produced by the overflowed lands; the debts were finally settled; the yacht was gone, indeed, when all was done, but the emeralds remained, and the next carnival season the famous beauty blazed in all her wonted splendor upon the old coterie in New Orleans which she had frequented in her girlhood. But she soon became secondary in the household. Colonel Desmond,—how Mrs. Kentopp laughed when that brevet of consideration was added to him instinctively, insensibly by the community, addicted to the bestowal of titles on those who so manifestly were entitled to the insignia of supremacy,—in the serene quiet of the ensuing winter, found in the desk of the library the scattered sheets of a manuscript which he had written in his lonely leisure in the early days of his stay at Great Oaks. He re-read it in surprise, and withal in self-conscious doubt, then again with growing appreciation. He thought that he could not now write its like. It had the concentrated strength of complete mental isolation. It was the work of the seer,—one who stands apart and judges justly without flinching, and it was instinct with the abstract truth. Much of it was bitter like life, much of it was sad; but it apprehended an unrealized purpose, a symmetry of design in life, a divine direction, and it shadowed this forth. So unfamiliar had the work grown in the lapse of time that he was flattered by the tone of its scholarship, its evidences of close reasoning, deep learning, and wide scope of thought, and the distinction of its literary style. For this reason he showed it to his wife and the eldest of the stepsons, and straightway the household clamor arose. Greatness unsolicited had knocked at their doors! Fame had been busy all this time gathering laurels for their brows. The younger sons, although uncomprehending, were equally elated, and though Desmond laughed at them all, he let them have their will, and he became grave and respectful toward their acumen when he read the letter of the publisher to whom it was submitted.
Mrs. Kentopp said later that its vogue—an absolutely unreadable book, on all sorts of political conditions, for nobody had really read it—was because a notable English statesman, very meddlesome with pen and ink, had canvassed its positions in a London quarterly, duller, if possible, and less read than the book itself, and another English quarterly had published Desmond’s reply, and for some time the counter-arguments of other political economists who found the work of vital interest caused the effusion of much printers’ ink. And when the family went to London the next year, Colonel Desmond was lionized in distinguished circles, and was given an additional learned degree at a great English university where he had taken one in his earlier youth.
“Deepwater Bend is a literary centre now, and don’t you forget it, and has its learned light,” Mrs. Kentopp dimpled, “though none of us of course have read or ever will read the Great Book.”
But even Mrs. Kentopp’s flings were destined to disregard and discontinuance. A javelin, however skillfully aimed, must needs have a point to take effect. “I don’t think there seems a disparity in age,” a stranger in a social company had dubiously replied to her delighted mention of the ten years’ difference. “Colonel Desmond does not look so much as ten years older.”
And after the company’s somewhat mischievous burst of laughter had shown their comprehension of her intention and hopelessly mystified the stranger, who could not imagine what had been said amiss, Colonel Kentopp had taken occasion to admonish his wife in private. “You do yourself no good, Annetta, by harping on that woman’s age. People will only think you carping and jealous.”
And, indeed, Desmond was fast growing older and graver. Other books had succeeded the first; and while they added distinction in differing degrees, they added, too, the marks of thought on brow and mien. Now the light always burned late from the library window on the water-side, and the river pilots counted its faint, far glow in their midnight bearings. Often they pointed it out with pride to some passenger admitted to the wheel-house, seeing it shining with a sort of stellular isolation amidst the darkling riparian forests of Great Oaks, and repeated the titles of his volumes, although perhaps, like Mrs. Kentopp, they had read none of the works.
But this was really not the illuminated hour of the library, the time of its signal triumph. Regularly every afternoon when the western sunlight, striking in long, slanting bars athwart it, turned from burnished gold to ethereal, hazy red, his wife appeared, and seated one on each side of the fire in true Darby-and-Joan fashion, as Kentopp’s prophetic eye had long ago beheld them from the veranda, Desmond read aloud the result of his day’s labor, while her beautiful, listening, reflective eyes dwelt on the coals and his voice filled the quiet spaces of the scholastic old room. She never criticised. She gave no word of applause. She offered no monition of advice. When he laid down the papers and their eyes met, her comment was always the same.
“What did I tell you long, long ago, the first afternoon that you and I ever sat here before the fire?”
“Why, that I ought to write for publication,—to write books.”
“And what did you say?”
“Well,” he always laughed as he replied,—“that I couldn’t,—that I was not capable of it.”
“Then,” she was wont to solemnly rejoin, while her eyes danced with joy and mirth and pride, “do you never _dare_ to contradict me again as long as you live.”
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. ● Enclosed blackletter font in =equals=.