John March, Southerner

XLIII.

ST. VALENTINE'S DAY

One morning some six weeks after New Year's eve Garnet's carriage wheels dripped water and mud as his good horses dragged them slowly into the borders of Suez. The soft, moist winds of February were ruffling the turbid waters of Turkey Creek and the swollen flood of the Swanee. A hint of new green brightened every road-side, willows were full of yellow light, and a pink and purple flush answered from woods to fence-row, from fence-row to woods, across and across the three counties.

"This pike's hardly a pike at all since the railroad's started," said the Major, more to himself than to Barbara and Johanna; for these were the two rear occupants of the carriage.

"Barb, I got a letter from Fair last night. You did too, didn't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"He'll be here next week. He says he can't stop with us this time."

Barbara was silent, and felt the shy, care-taking glance of her maid. Garnet spoke again, in the guarded tone she knew so well.

"I reckon you understand he's only coming to see if he'll take stock in this land company we're getting up, don't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Doe he know you're going to spend these two weeks at Halliday's before you go North?"

"I think he does."

The questioner turned enough to make a show of frowning solicitude. "What's the matter with you this morning? sad at the thought of leaving home?"

"No, sir" – the speaker smiled meditatively – "we only don't hit on a subject of interest to both."

The father faced to front again and urged the horses. He even raised the whip, but let it droop. Then he turned sharply and drew his daughter's glance. "Is Fair going to stay with John March?"

They sat gaze to gaze while their common blood surged up to his brows and more gradually suffused her face. Without the stir of an eyelash she let her lips part enough to murmur, "Yes."

Before her word was finished Garnet's retort was bursting from him, "Thanks to you, you intermeddling – " He was cut short by the lurch of the carriage into a hole. It flounced him into the seat from which he had half started and faced him to the horses. With a smothered imprecation he rose and laid on the whip. They plunged, the carriage sprang from the hole and ploughed the mire, and Garnet sat down and drove into the town's main avenue, bespattered with mud from head to waist.

Near the gate of the Academy grounds stood Parson Tombs talking to a youth in Rosemont uniform. The student passed on, and the pastor, with an elated face, waved a hand to Garnet. Garnet stopped and the Parson came close.

"Brother Tombs, howdy?"

"Why, howdy-do, Brother Garnet? – Miss Barb! – Johanna." He pointed covertly at the departing youth and murmured to Garnet, "He'll make ow fo'teenth convert since New Year's. And still there is room! – Well, brother, I've been a-hearin' about John March's an' yo'-all's lan' boom, but" – the good man giggled – "I never see a case o' measles break out finer than the lan' business is broke out on you! – And you don't seem to mind it no mo'n – Look here! air you a miracle o' grace, aw what air you?"

"Why, nothing, Brother Tombs, nothing! Nothing but an old soldier who's learned that serenity's always best."

The Parson turned to Barbara and cast a doting smile sidewise upon the old soldier. But Garnet set his face against flattery and changed the subject.

"Brother Tombs, speaking of John March, you know now risky it is for anybody – unless it's you – to say anything to him. Oh, I dare say he's changed, but when he hasn't been converted two months, nor a member of the church three weeks, we mustn't expect him to have the virtues of an old Christian."

"He's changed mo'n I'm at libbety to tell you, Brother Garnet. He's renounced dancing."

"Yes? – Indeed! He's quit dancing. But still he carries two revolvers."

"Why, Brother John Wesley, I – that's so. I've spoke to John about that, but – the fact is – "

Garnet smiled. "His life's in constant danger – that's my very point. The bad weather's protected him thus far, but if it should last five years without a break, still you know that as soon as it fairs off – "

"Uv co'se! Enos's kinsfolks 'll be layin' faw him behind some bush aw sett'n' fire to his house; an' so what shall he do, brother, if we say he – "

"Oh, let him shoot a Yahoo or two if he must, but I think you ought to tell him he's committing a criminal folly in asking that young Yankee, Mr. Fair, to stop with him at Widewood when he comes here next week!"

"Why, Brother Garnet! Why, supposin' that young stranger should get shot!"

"Yes, or if he should no more than see March shot or shot at! What an impression he'd carry back North with him! It's an outrage on our whole people, sir, and God knows! – I speak reverently, my dear brother – we've suffered enough of that sort of slander! I'd tell him, myself, but – this must be between us, of course – "

"Why, of co'se, Brother Garnet," murmured the Pastor and bent one ear.

"It's a pure piece of selfish business rivalry on John's part toward me. He's asked Fair to his house simply to keep him away from Rosemont."

"Why, Brother Garnet! Rosemont's right where he'd ought to go to!"

"In John's own interest!" said Garnet.

"In John's – you're right, my brother! I'm suprised he don't see it so!"

"O – I'm not! He's a terribly overrated chap, Brother Tombs. Fact is – I say it in the sincerest friendship for him – John's got no real talents and not much good sense – though one or two of his most meddlesome friends have still less." The Major began to gather up the reins.

"Well, I'll try to see him, Brother Garnet. I met him yeste'day – Look here! I reckon that young man's not goin' to stop with him after all. He told me yeste'day he was going to put a friend into Swanee Hotel because Sisteh March felt too feeble, aw fearful, aw somethin', an' he felt bound to stand his expenses."

"And so he" – the Major paused pleasantly. "How much did you lend him?"

"Aw! Brother Garnet, I didn't mean you to know that! He had to put shuttehs on his sitt'n'-room windows, too, you know, to quiet Sisteh March's ve'y natu'al fears. I only promised to lend him a small amount if he should need it."

"O, he'll need it," said the Major, and included Barbara in his broad smile. "Still, I hope you'll let him have it. If he doesn't return it to you I will; I loved his father. John should have come to me, Brother Tombs, as he's always done. I say this to you privately, you know. I'll consider the loan practically made to me, for we simply can't let Fair go to Widewood, even if John puts shutters on all his windows."

Again the speaker lifted his reins and the Parson drew back with a bow to Barbara, when Johanna spoke and the whole group stared after two townward-bound horsemen.

"Those are mountain people, right now," said the Parson.

"Yes," replied Garnet, "but they're no kin to Enos." He moved on to Halliday's gate.

It was the fourteenth of the month. The Major stayed in town for the evening mail and drove home after dark, alone, but complacent, almost jovial. He had got three valentines.

XLIV.

ST. VALENTINE'S: EVENING

At Widewood that same hour there was deep silence. Since the first of the year the only hands left on the place were a decrepit old negro and wife, whom even he pronounced "wuthless," quartered beyond the stable-yard's farther fence. For some days this "lady" had been Widewood's only cook, owing to the fact that Mrs. March's servant, having a few nights before seen a man prowling about the place, had left in such a panic as almost to forget her wages, and quite omitting to leave behind her several articles of the Widewood washing.

Within the house John March sat reading newspapers. His healthy legs were crossed toward the flickering hearth, and his strong shoulders touched the centre-table lamp. The new batten shutters excluded the beautiful outer night. His mother, to whom the mail had brought nothing, was sitting in deep shadow, her limp form and her regular supply of disapproving questions alike exhausted. Her slender elbow slipped now and then from the arm of her rocking-chair, and unconscious gleams of incredulity and shades of grief still alternated across her face with every wrinkling effort of her brows to hold up her eyelids.

John was not so absorbed as he seemed. He felt both the silence and the closed shutters drearily, and was not especially cheered by the following irrelevant query in the paragraph before him:

"Who – having restored the sight of his jailer's blind daughter and converted her father from idolatry – was on this day beheaded?"

Yet here was a chance to be pleasant at the expense of a man quite too dead to mind.

"Mother," he began, so abruptly that Mrs. March started with a violent shudder, "this is February fourteenth. Did any ancient person of your acquaintance lose his head to-day?" He turned a facetious glance that changed in an instant to surprise. His mother had straightened up with bitter indignation, but she softened to an agony of reproach as she cried:

"John!"

"Why, mother, what?"

"Ah! John! John!" She gazed at him tearfully. "Is this what you've joined the church for? To cloak such – "

"My dear mother! I was simply trying to joke away the dismals! Why," – he smiled persuasively – "if you only knew what a hard job it is." But the ludicrousness of her misconstruction took him off his guard, and in spite of the grimmest endeavor to prevent it, his smile increased and he stopped to keep from laughing.

Mrs. March rose, eloquent with unspoken resentment, and started from the room. At the door she cast back the blush of a martyr's forgiveness, and the next instant was in her son's big right arm. His words were broken with laughter.

"My dear, pretty little mother!" She struggled alarmedly, but he held her fast. "Why, I know the day is nothing to you, dear, less than nothing. I know perfectly well that I am your own and only valentine. Ain't I? Because you're mine now, you know, since I've turned over this new leaf."

The mother averted her face. "O my son, I'm so unused to loving words, they only frighten me."

But John spoke on with deepening emotion. "Yes, mother, I'm going to be your valentine, and yours only, as I've never been or thought of being in all my life before. I'm going to try my very best! You'll help me, won't you, little valentine mother?"

She lifted a glance of mournful derision. "Valentine me no valentines. You but increase my heart-loneliness. Ah! my self-deluded boy, your fickle pledges only mean, to my sad experience, that you have made your own will everything, and my wish nothing. Valentine me no valentines, let me go."

The young man turned abruptly and strode back to his newspapers. But he was too full of bitterness to read. He heard his mother's soft progress upstairs, and her slow step in the unlighted room overhead. It ceased. She must have sat down in the dark. A few moments passed. Then it sounded again, but so strange and hurried that he started up, and as he did so the cry came, frantic with alarm, from the upper hall, and then from the head of the stairs:

"John! John!"

He was already bounding up them. Mrs. March stood at the top, pale and trembling. "A man!" she cried, "with a gun! I saw him down in the moonlight under my window! I saw him! he's got a gun!"

She was deaf and blind to her son's beseechings to be quiet. He caught her hands in his; they were icy. He led her by gentle force down-stairs and back to her sitting-room seat.

"Why, that's all right, mother; that's what you made me put the shutters on down here for. If you'd just come and told me quietly, why, I might a' got him from your window. Did you see him?"

"I don't know," she moaned. "He had a gun. I saw one end of it."

"Are you sure it was a gun? Which end did you see, the butt or the muzzle?"

Mrs. March only gasped. She was too refined a woman to mention either end of a gun by name. "I saw – the – front end."

"He didn't aim it at you, or at anything, did he?"

"No – yes – he aimed it – sidewise."

"Sideways! Now, mother, there I draw the line! No man shall come around here aiming his gun sideways; endangering the throngs of casual bystanders!"

"Ah! John, is this the time to make your captive and beleaguered mother the victim of ribald jests?"

"My dear mother, no! it's a time to go to bed. If that fellow's still nosing 'round here with his gun aimed sideways he's protection enough! But seriously, mother, whatever you mean by being embargoed and blockaded – "

"I did not say embargoed and blockaded!"

"Why, my dear mother, those were your very words!"

"They were not! They were not my words! And yet, alas! how truly – " She turned and wept.

"O Lord! mother – "

"My son, you've broken the second commandment!"

"It was already broke! O for heaven's sake, mother, don't cave in in this hysterical way!"

The weeper whisked round with a face of wild beseeching. "O, my son, call me anything but that! Call me weak and credulous, too easily led and misled! Call me too poetical and confiding! I know I'm more lonely than I dare tell my own son! But I'm not – Oho! I'm not hysterical!" she sobbed.

So it continued for an hour. Then the lamp gave out and they went to bed.

The next morning John drove his mother to Suez for a visit of several days among her relatives, and rode on into Blackland to see if he could find "a girl" for Widewood. He spent three days and two nights at these tasks, stopping while in Blackland with – whom would you suppose? Proudfit, for all the world! He took an emphatic liking to the not too brainy colonel, and a new disrelish to his almost too sparkling wife.

As, at sunset of the third day, he again drew near Suez and checked his muddy horse's gallop at Swanee River Bridge, his heart leaped into his throat. He hurriedly raised his hat, but not to the transcendent beauties of the charming scene, unless these were Fannie Halliday and Barbara Garnet.

XLV.

A LITTLE VOYAGE OF DISCOVERIES

For two girls out on a quiet stroll, their arms about each other and their words murmurous, not any border of Suez was quite so alluring as the woods and waters seen from the parapet of this fine old stone bridge.

The main road from Blackland crossed here. As it reached the Suez side it made a strong angle under the town's leafy bluffs and their two or three clambering by-streets, and ran down the rocky margin of the stream to the new railway station and the old steamboat landing half a mile below. The bridge was entirely of rugged gray limestone, and spanned the river's channel and willow-covered sand-bars in seven high, rude arches. One Christmas dawn during the war a retreating enemy, making ready to blow up the structure, were a moment too slow, and except for the scars of a few timely shells dropped into their rear guard, it had come through those years unscathed. For, just below it, and preferable to it most of the year, was a broad gravelly ford. Beyond the bridge, on the Blackland side, the road curved out of view between woods on the right and meadows on the left. A short way up the river the waters came dimpling, green and blue in August, but yellow and swirling now, around the long, bare foot of a wooded island, that lay forever asleep in midstream, overrun and built upon by the winged Liliputians of the shores and fields.

The way down to this spot from the Halliday cottage was a grassy street overarched with low-branching evergreen oaks, and so terraced that the trees at times robbed the view of even a middle distance. It was by this way that Fannie and Barbara had come, with gathered skirts, picking dainty zigzags where, now and then, the way was wet. The spirit of spring was in the lightness of their draperies' texture and dyes – only a woman's eye would have noticed that Barbara was in mourning – and their broken talk was mainly on a plan for the celebration, on the twenty-second, not of any great and exceptionally truthful patriot's birthday – Captains Champion and Shotwell were seeing to that – but of Parson Tombs's and his wife's golden wedding.

When John March saw them, they had just been getting an astonishing amount of amusement out of the simple fact that Miss Mary Salter and the younger pastor were the committee on decorations. They were standing abreast the bridge's parapet, the evening air stirring their garments, watching the stern-wheeler, Launcelot Halliday, back out from the landing below into the fretting current for a trip down stream. John had always approved this companionship; it had tended to sustain his old illusion that Fannie's extra years need not count between her and him. But the pleasure of seeing them together now was but a flash and was gone, for something else than extra years was counting, which had never counted before. He had turned over a new leaf, as he said. On it he had subscribed with docile alacrity to every ancient grotesqueness in Parson Tombs's science of God, sin, and pardon; and then had stamped Fannie's picture there, fondly expecting to retain it by the very simple trick of garlanding it round with the irrefragable proposition that love is the fulfilling of the law! But not many days had the leaf been turned when a new and better conscience awoke to find shining there, still wet from God's own pen, the corollary that only a whole sphere of love can fulfil the law's broad circumference.

As Fannie and Barbara made their bow and moved to pass on he hurriedly raised his hat and his good horse dropped into a swift, supple walk. The bridle hand started as if to draw in, but almost at the same instant the animal sprang again into a gait which showed the spur had touched her, and was quickly out of hearing.