Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches

He decided that he had guessed rightly; the Episcopalian was, he had heard, a very cheerful kind of religion, tears and groaning not being required of its neophytes.

But his eyes were to be opened. The last trump could not have startled him more than something he saw with his own eyes one day. It happened in this way: There was an accident on the wharf; a young man was crushed between the end of the dock and the side of the steamer; some one came running to the cottage and said it was Lawrence Vickery. Mrs. Manning, the hands at the mill, and even old Dinah, started off at once; the whole town was hurrying to the scene. Bro, shut up in his workroom, going over his beloved valve again, did not hear or see them. It was nearly dinner-time, and, when he came out and found no boat, he was surprised; but he paddled himself across on a rude raft he had, and went up to the cottage. The doors stood open all over the house as the hasty departures had left them, and he heard Marion walking up and down in her room up stairs, sobbing aloud and wildly. He had never heard her sob before; even as a child she had been reticent and self-controlled. He stood appalled at the sound. What could it betoken? He stole to the foot of the stairs and listened. She was moaning Lawrence's name over and over to herself – "Lawrence! Lawrence! Lawrence!" He started up the stairs, hardly knowing what he was doing. Her grief was dreadful to him: he wanted to comfort her, but did not know how. He hardly realized what the cry meant. But it was to come to him. The heart-broken girl, who neither saw nor heard him, although he was now just outside the door, drew a locket from her bosom and kissed it passionately with a flood of despairing, loving words. Then, as if at the end of her strength, with a sigh like death, she sank to the floor lifeless; she had fainted.

After a moment the man entered. He seemed to himself to have been standing outside that door for a limitless period of time; like those rare, strange sensations we feel of having done the same thing or spoken the same words before in some other and unknown period of existence. He lifted Marion carefully and laid her on a lounge. As he moved her, the locket swung loose against her belt on the long ribbon which was fastened underneath her dress around her throat. It was a clumsy, old-fashioned locket, with an open face, and into its small frame she herself had inserted a photograph of Lawrence Vickery, cut from a carte de visite. Bro saw it: the open face of the locket was toward him, and he could not help seeing. It occurred to him then vaguely that, as she had worn it concealed, it should be again hidden before other eyes saw it – before she could know that even his had rested upon it. With shaking fingers he took out his knife, and, opening its smallest blade, he gently severed the ribbon, took off the locket, and put it into her pocket. It was surprising to see how skillfully his large, rough hands did this. Then, with an afterthought, he found a worn place in the ribbon's end, and severed it again by pulling it apart, taking the cut portion away with him. His idea was, that she would think the ribbon had parted of itself at the worn spot, and she did think so. It was a pretty, slender little ribbon, of bright rose-color. When all was finished, he went to seek assistance. He knew no more what to do for her physically than he would have known what to do for an angel. Although there was not the faintest sign of consciousness, he had carefully refrained from even touching her unnecessarily in the slightest degree: it seemed to him profanation. But there was no one in the house. He went to the gate, and there caught sight of Mrs. Manning hurrying homeward across the sandy waste.

"It is all a mistake," she panted, with the tears still dropping on her crimson cheeks. "It was not Lawrence at all, but young Harding. Lawrence has gone down the road with the superintendent; but poor young Harding is, I fear, fatally injured."

Even then automatic memory brought to Bro's mind only the idea, "He will never twist his feet around chair-legs any more! It was almost the only fault he had, poor fellow!"

"Miss Marion is not quite well, I think," he said. "I heard her crying a little up stairs as I came in."

"Of course," said the mother, "poor child! But it is all over now. – It was not Lawrence at all, Marion," she cried loudly, hurrying up the path to the doorway; "it was only young Harding."

Love has ears, even in semi-death, and it heard that cry. When Mrs. Manning, breathless, reached her daughter's room, she found her on the lounge still, but with recovered consciousness, and even palely smiling. The picture was safely in her pocket; she supposed, when she found it, that she must have placed it there herself. She never had any suspicion of Bro's presence or his action.

The saw-miller had disappeared. Mrs. Manning supposed that he, in his turn, had gone to the dock or to the Harding cottage.

When he came in to tea that night he looked strangely, but was able to account for it.

"Letters from Washington," he said. Then he paused; they looked at him expectantly. "The idea of the register is not a new one," he added slowly; "it has already been patented."

"My inheritance is gone, then," said Marion gayly.

She spoke without reflection, being so happy now in the reaction of her great relief that she was very near talking nonsense, a feminine safety-valve which she hardly ever before had had occasion to seek.

"Yes," said Bro, a pained quiver crossing his face for an instant. "The valve also is pronounced worthless," he added in a monotonous voice.

Mother and daughter noticed his tone and his lifeless look; they attributed it to his deep, bitter disappointment, and felt sorry for him.

"But the screw, Bro?" said Mrs. Manning.

"That is successful, I believe; the patent is granted."

"I knew it," she replied triumphantly. "Even I could see the great merits it had. I congratulate you, Bro."

"So do I," said Marion. She would have congratulated anybody that evening.

"The valve is a disappointment to me," said the man, speaking steadily, although dully. "I had worked over it so long that I counted upon it as certain."

Then he rose and went over to the mill.

In the mean time Lawrence Vickery was riding homeward comfortably on the hand-car, and had no idea that he was supposed to be dead. But he learned it; and learned something else also from Marion's sensitive, tremulous face, delicate as a flower. A warm-hearted, impulsive fellow, he was touched by her expression, and went further than he intended. That is to say, that, having an opportunity, thanks to Mrs. Manning, who went up stairs, purposely leaving them alone together, he began by taking Marion's hand reassuringly, and looking into her eyes, and ended by having her in his arms and continuing to look into her eyes, but at a much nearer range. In short, he put himself under as firm betrothal bonds as ever a man did in the whole history of betrothals.

In the mean time the soft-hearted mother, sitting in the darkness up stairs, was shedding tears tenderly, and thinking of her own betrothal. That Lawrence was poor was a small matter to her, compared with the fact that Marion was loved at last, and happy. Lawrence was a Vickery, and the son of her old friend; besides, to her, as to most Southern women, the world is very well lost for the sake of love.

And Bro, over at the saw-mill?

His red lights shone across the marsh as usual, and he was in his work-room; in his hand was the model of his valve. He had made it tell a lie that night; he had used it as a mask. He gazed at it, the creature of his brain, his companion through long years, and he felt that he no longer cared whether it was good for anything or not! Then he remembered listlessly that it was good for nothing; the highest authorities had said so. But, gone from him now was the comprehension of their reasons, and this he began to realize. He muttered over a formula, began a calculation, both well known to him; he could do neither. His mind strayed from its duty idly, as a loose bough sways in the wind. He put his hands to his head and sat down. He sat there motionless all night.

But oh, how happy Marion was! Not effusively, not spokenly, but internally; the soft light shining out from her heart, however, as it does through a delicate porcelain shade. Old Mr. Vickery was delighted too, and a new series of invitations followed in honor of the betrothal; even the superintendent was invited, and came on his hand-car. Bro was included also, but he excused himself. His excuses were accepted without insistence, because it was understood that he was almost heart-broken by his disappointments. Joy and sorrow meet. When the engagement had lasted five weeks, and Marion had had thirty-five days of her new happiness, the old grandfather died, rather suddenly, but peacefully, and without pain. Through a long, soft April day he lay quietly looking at them all, speechless but content; and then at sunset he passed away. Mrs. Manning wept heartily, and Marion too; even Lawrence was not ashamed of the drops on his cheeks as he surveyed the kind old face, now for ever still. Everybody came to the funeral, and everybody testified respect; then another morning broke, and life went on again. The sun shines just the same, no matter who has been laid in the earth, and the flowers bloom. This seems to the mourner a strange thing, and a hard. In this case, however, there was no one to suffer the extreme pain of violent separation, for all the old man's companions and contemporaries were already gone; he was the last.

Another month went by, and another; the dead heats of summer were upon them. Marion minded them not; scorching air and arctic snows were alike to her when Lawrence was with her. Poor girl! she had the intense, late-coming love of her peculiar temperament: to please him she would have continued smiling on the rack itself until she died. But why, after all, call her "poor"? Is not such love, even if unreturned, great riches?

Bro looked at her, and looked at her, and looked at her. He had fallen back into his old way of life again, and nobody noticed anything unusual in him save what was attributed to his disappointment.

"You see he had shut himself up there, and worked over that valve for years," explained Mrs. Manning; "and, not letting anybody know about it either, he had come to think too much of it, and reckon upon it as certain. He was always an odd, lonely sort of man, you know, and this has told upon him heavily."

By and by it became evident that Lawrence was restless. He had sold off what he could of his inheritance, but that was only the old furniture; no one wanted the sidling, unrepaired house, which was now little better than a shell, or the deserted cotton-fields, whose dikes were all down. He had a scheme for going abroad again; he could do better there, he said; he had friends who would help him.

"Shall you take Miss Marion?" asked Bro, speaking unexpectedly, and, for him, markedly. They were all present.

"Oh, no," said Lawrence, "not now. How could I? But I shall come back for her soon." He looked across at his betrothed with a smile. But Marion had paled suddenly, and Bro had seen it.

The next event was a conversation at the mill.

Young Vickery wandered over there a few days later. He was beginning to feel despondent and weary: everything at Wilbarger was at its summer ebb, and the climate, too, affected him. Having become really fond of Marion now, and accustomed to all the sweetness of her affection, he hated to think of leaving her; yet he must. He leaned against the window-sill, and let out disjointed sentences of discontent to Bro; it even seemed a part of his luck that it should be dead low water outside as he glanced down, and all the silver channels slimy.

"That saw makes a fearful noise," he said.

"Come into my room," said Bro; "you will not hear it so plainly there." It was not the work-room, but the bedroom. The work-room was not mentioned now, out of kindness to Bro. Lawrence threw himself down on the narrow bed, and dropped his straw hat on the floor. "The world's a miserable hole," he said, with unction.

Bro sat down on a three-legged stool, the only approach to a chair in the room, and looked at him; one hand, in the pocket of his old, shrunk linen coat, was touching a letter.

"Bah!" said Lawrence, clasping his hands under his head and stretching himself out to his full length on the bed, "how in the world can I leave her, Bro? Poor little thing!"

Now to Bro, to whom Marion had always seemed a cross between a heavenly goddess and an earthly queen, this epithet was startling; however, it was, after all, but a part of the whole.

"It is a pity that you should leave her," he replied slowly. "It would be much better to take her with you."

"Yes, I know it would. I am a fickle sort of fellow, too, and have all sorts of old entanglements over there, besides. They might take hold of me again."

Bro felt a new and strange misgiving, which went through three distinct phases, with the strength and depth of an ocean, in less than three seconds: first, bewilderment at the new idea that anybody could be false to Marion; second, a wild, darting hope for himself; third, the returning iron conviction that it could never be, and that, if Lawrence deserted Marion, she would die.

"If you had money, what would you do?" he asked, coming back to the present heavily.

"Depends upon how much it was."

"Five thousand dollars?"

"Well – I'd marry on that, but not very hilariously, old fellow."

"Ten?"

"That would do better."

Nothing has as yet been said of Lawrence Vickery's appearance. It will be described now, and will, perhaps, throw light backward over this narration.

Imagine a young man, five feet eleven inches in height, straight, strong, but slender still, in spite of his broad shoulders; imagine, in addition, a spirited head and face, bright, steel-blue eyes, a bold profile, and beautiful mouth, shaded by a golden mustache; add to this, gleaming white teeth, a dimple in the cleft, strongly molded chin, a merry laugh, and a thoroughly manly air; and you have Lawrence Broughton Vickery at twenty-eight.

When at last he took himself off, and went over to see Marion and be more miserable still, Bro drew the letter from his pocket, and read it for the sixth or seventh time. During these months his screw had become known, having been pushed persistently by the enterprising young lawyer who aspired to patent business in the beginning, and having held its own since by sheer force of merit. The enterprising young lawyer had, however, recently forsaken law for politics; he had gone out to one of the Territories with the intention of returning some day as senator when the Territory should be a State (it is but fair to add that his chance is excellent). But he had, of course, no further knowledge of the screw, and Bro now managed the business himself. This letter was from a firm largely engaged in the manufacture of machinery, and it contained an offer for the screw and patent outright – ten thousand dollars.

"I shall never invent anything more," thought Bro, the words of the letter writing themselves vacantly on his brain. "Something has gone wrong inside my head in some way, and the saw-mill will be all I shall ever attend to again."

Then he paused.

"It would be worth more money in the end if I could keep it," he said to himself. "But even a larger sum might not serve so well later, perhaps." It was all to be Marion's in either case – which would be best? Then he remembered her sudden pallor, and that decided him. "He shall have it now," he said. "How lucky that he was content with ten!"

Some men would have given the money also in the same circumstances; but they would have given it to Marion. It was characteristic of Bro's deep and minute knowledge of the girl, and what would be for her happiness, that he planned to give the money to the man, and thus weight down and steady the lighter nature.

He dwelt a long time upon ways and means; he was several days in making up his mind. At last he decided what to do; and did it.

Three weeks afterward a letter came to Wilbarger, directed in a clear handwriting to "Mr. Lawrence Broughton Vickery." It was from a Northern lawyer, acting for another party, and contained an offer for Vickery Island with its house, cotton-fields, and marsh; price offered, ten thousand dollars. The lawyer seemed to be acquainted with the size of the island, the condition of the fields and out-buildings; he mentioned that the purchase was made with the idea of reviving the cotton-culture immediately, similar attempts on the part of Rhode Island manufacturers, who wished to raise their own cotton, having succeeded on the sea-islands farther north. Lawrence, in a whirl of delight, read the letter aloud in a cottage-parlor, tossed it over gayly to Mrs. Manning, and clasped Marion in his arms.

"Well, little wife," he said happily, stroking her soft hair, "we shall go over the ocean together now."

And Bro looked on.

The wedding took place in the early autumn. Although comparatively quiet, on account of old Mr. Vickery's death, all Wilbarger came to the church, and crowded into the cottage afterward. By a happy chance, "the worm" was at the North, soliciting aid for his "fold," and Marion was married by a gentle little missionary, who traversed the watery coast-district in a boat instead of on horseback, visiting all the sea-islands, seeing many sad, closed little churches, and encountering not infrequently almost pure paganism and fetich-worship among the neglected blacks. Bro gave the bride away. It was the proudest moment of his life – and the saddest.

"Somebody must do it," Mrs. Manning had said; "and why not Bro? He has lived in our house for twelve years, and, after all, now that old Mr. Vickery is gone, he is in one way our nearest friend. – Do let me ask him, Marion."

"Very well," assented the bride, caring but little for anything now but to be with Lawrence every instant.

She did, however, notice Bro during the crowded although informal reception which followed the ceremony. In truth, he was noticeable. In honor of the occasion, he had ordered from Savannah a suit of black, and had sent the measurements himself; the result was remarkable, the coat and vest being as much too short for him as the pantaloons were too long. He wore a white cravat, white-cotton gloves so large that he looked all hands, and his button-hole was decked with flowers, as many as it could hold. In this garb he certainly was an extraordinary object, and his serious face appearing at the top made the effect all the more grotesque. Marion was too good-hearted to smile; but she did say a word or two in an undertone to Lawrence, and the two young people had their own private amusement over his appearance.

But Bro was unconscious of it, or of anything save the task he had set for himself. It was remarked afterward that "really Bro Cranch talked almost like other people, joked and laughed, too, if you will believe it, at that Manning wedding."

Lawrence promised to bring his wife home at the end of a year to see her mother, and perhaps, if all went well, to take the mother back with them. Mrs. Manning, happy and sad together, cried and smiled in a breath. But Marion was radiant as a diamond; her gray eyes flashed light. Not even when saying good-by could she pretend to be anything but supremely happy, even for a moment. By chance Bro had her last look as the carriage rolled away; he went over to the mill carrying it with him, and returned no more that night.

Wilbarger began to wonder after a while when that Rhode Island capitalist would begin work in his cotton-fields; they are wondering still. In course of time, and through the roundabout way he had chosen, Bro received the deeds of sale; he made his will, and left them to Marion. Once Mrs. Manning asked him about the screw.

"I have heard nothing of it for some time," he replied; and she said no more, thinking it had also, like the valve, proved a failure. In the course of the winter the little work-room was dismantled and the partitions taken down; there is nothing there now but the plain wall of the mill. The red lights no longer shine across the marsh to Vickery Island, and there is no one there to see them. The new keeper lives in a cabin at the bridge, and plays no tricks on the superintendent, who, a man of spirit still, but not quite so sanguine as to the future of Wilbarger, still rolls by on his hand-car from northeast to southeast.

Bro has grown old; he is very patient with everybody. Not that he ever was impatient, but that patience seems now his principal characteristic. He often asks to hear portions of Marion's letters read aloud, and always makes gently the final comment: "Yes, yes; she is happy!"

It is whispered around Wilbarger that he "has had a stroke"; Mrs. Manning herself thinks so.

Well, in a certain sense, perhaps she is right.