John March, Southerner

XXII.

CLIMBING LOVER'S LEAP

The woods grew dense and pathless, and the whispering gave place to a busy fending off of the strong undergrowth. Presently John tied the horse, and the riders stepped into an open spot on a precipitous mountain side. At their left a deep gorge sank so abruptly that a small stone, casually displaced, went sliding and rattling beyond earshot. On their right a wasted moon rose and stared at them over the mountain's shoulder; while within hand's reach, a rocky cliff, bald on its crown, stripped to the waist, and draped at its foot in foliage, towered in the shadow of the vast hill.

"Why, good Lawd, Mr. March, this is Lover's Leap! We cayn't neveh climb up here!"

"We've got to! D' you reckon I brought you here to look at it? Come on. We've only got to reach that last cedar yonder by the dead pine."

The mulatto moaned, but they climbed. As they rose the black gorge seemed to crawl under them and open its hungry jaws.

"Great Lawd! Mr. March, this is sut'n death! Leas'wise it is to me. I cayn't go no fu'ther, Mr. March; I inglected to tell you I'se got a pow'ful lame foot."

"Keep quiet," murmured John, "and come on. Only don't look down."

The reply was a gasp of horror. "Oh! mussy me, you spoke too late! Wait jess a minute, Mr. March, I'll stan' up ag'in in a minute. I jess mus' set here a minute an' enjoy the view; it's gr-gran'!

"Yass, seh. I'se a-comin', seh. I'll rise up in a few minutes; I'm sick at my stomach, but it'll pass off if I kin jiss set still a shawt while tell it passes off."

The speaker slowly rose, grabbling the face of the rock.

"Mr. March, wait a minute, I w-want to tell you. Is-is-is you w-waitin'? Mr. March, this is pufficly safe and haza'dous, seh, I feels that, seh, but I don't like this runnin' away an' hidin'! It's cowardly; le's go down an' face the thing like men! I'm goin' to crawl down back 'ards; thass the skilfullest way."

"Halt!" growled John, and something else added "tick-tick."

"Oh! Mr. March, faw God's sake! Ef you mus' shoot me, shoot me whah I won't fall so fuh! Why, I was a-jokin'! I wa'n't a-dreamin' o' goin' back! Heah I come, seh, look out! Oh, please put up that-ah naysty-lookin' thing! – Thank you, seh! – Mr. March, escuse me jiss a minute whilse I epitomize my breath a little, seh, I jess want to recover my dizziness – This is fine, ain't it? Oh, Lawd! Mr. March, escuse my sinkin' down this a-way! Oh, don't disfunnish yo'seff to come back to me, seh; I's jiss faint and thusty. Mr. March, I ain't a-scared; I'm jiss a-parishin' o' thust! Lawd! I'm jiss that bole an' rackless I'd resk twenty lives faw jiss one hafe a finger o' pyo whiskey. I dunno what'll happm to me ef I don't git some quick. I ain't had a drap sence the night o' the ball, an' thass what make this-yeh flatulency o' the heart. Oh! please don't tech me; ev'm ef you lif' me I cayn't stan'. Oh, Lawd! the icy han' o' death is on me. I'll soon be in glory!"

"Glory!" answered an echo across the gorge.

John laughed. "We're nearly to the cave. If I have to carry you it 'll double the danger."

"Oh, yass, seh! you go on, I'll jine you. I jis wants a few minutes to myseff faw prayer."

"Cornelius," said the cautiously stooping youth, "I'm going to take you where I said I would, if I have to carry you there in three pieces. Here – wait – I'd better tote you on my back. Put your arms around my neck. Now give me your legs. That's it. Now, hold firm; one false step and over we go."

He slowly picked his way. Once he stopped, while a stone which had crumbled from under his tread went crashing through the bushes and into the yawning gulf. The footing was terribly narrow for several rods, but at length it widened. He crouched again. "Now, get off; the rest is only some steep climbing in the bushes."

"Mr. March, I ain't eveh goin' to git down to God's blessed level groun' ag'in!"

"Think not? You'll be there in five seconds if you take hold of any dead wood. Come on."

They climbed again, hugged the cliff while they took breath, climbed once more, forebore to look down, and soon, crowding into what had seemed but a shallow cleft, were stooping under the low roof of a small cavern. Its close rocky bounds and tumbled floor sparkled here and there in the light of the matches John struck. From their pockets the pair laid out a scant store of food.

"Now I must go," said John. "I'll come again to-morrow night. You're safe here. You may find a snake or two, but you don't mind that, do you?"

"Me? Law, no! not real ones. Di'mon'-back rattlesnake hisself cayn't no mo' scare me 'n if I was a hawg. Good-by, seh."

How the heavy-eyed youth the next day finished his examinations he scarcely knew himself, but he hoped he had somehow passed. He could not slip away from Rosemont until after bedtime, and the night was half gone when he reached the cliff under Lover's Leap. A light rain increased the risk of the climb, but he reached the cave in safety only to find it deserted. On his way down he discovered ample signs that the promiscuous lover, an hour or two before, had slowly, safely, and in the "skilfullest way" reached the arms of his most dangerous but dearest love; "cooned it every step," John said, talking to his horse as they trudged back toward Rosemont. "What the rattle-snakes couldn't do," he added, "the bottle-snake has done."

Mr. Leggett's perils might not be over, but out of the youth's hands meant off his indulgent conscience, and John returned to his slighted books, quickened in all his wilful young blood by the knowledge that a single night of adventurous magnanimity had made him henceforth master of himself, his own purposes, and his own mistakes.

XXIII.

A SUMMONS FOR THE JUDGE

Baccalaureate Sunday. It was hot, even for Suez. The river seemed to shine with heat. Yet every convenient horse-rack was crowded with horses, more than half of them under side-saddles, and in the square neighing steeds, tied to swinging limbs because too emotionally noble to share their privileges with anything they could kick, pawed, wheeled, and gazed after their vanished riders as if to say, "'Pon my word, if he hasn't gone to church."

The church, Parson Tombs's, was packed. Men were not few, yet the pews and the aisles, choked with chairs from end to end, were one yeast of muslins, lawns, and organdies, while everywhere the fans pulsed and danced a hundred measures at once in fascinating confusion.

In the amen pews on the right sat all Montrose; facing them, on the left, sat all Rosemont, except the principal; Garnet was with the pastor in the pulpit. The Governor of Dixie was present; the first one they of the old régime had actually gotten into the gubernatorial chair since the darkies had begun to vote. Two members of the Governor's staff sat in a front pew in uniform; blue!

"See that second man on the left?" whispered Captain Shotwell to an old army friend from Charleston; "that handsome felleh with the wavy auburn hair, soft mustache, and big, sawt o' pawnderin' eyes?"

"What! that the Governor? He can't be over thirty or thirty-one!"

"Governor, no! he wouldn't take the governorship; that's Jeff-Jack Ravenel, editor of the Courier, a-ablest man in Dixie. No, that's the Governor next to him."

"That old toad? Why, he's a moral hulk; look at his nose!"

"Yes, it's a pity, but we done the best we could – had to keep the alignment, you know. His brother leases and sublets convicts, five stockades of 'em, and ought to be one himself.

"These girls inside the altar-rail, they're the academy chorus. That one? Oh, that's Halliday's daughter. Yass, beautiful, but you should 'a' seen her three years ago. No use talkin', seh – I wouldn't say so to a Yankee, but – ow climate's hard on beauty. Teach in the acad'? Oh! no, seh, she jus' sings with 'em. Magnificent voice. Some Yankees here last week allowed they'd ruther hear her than Adelina Patti – in some sawngs.

"She's an awful man-killeh; repo'ted engaged to five fellehs at once, Jeff-Jack included. I don't know whether it's true or not, but you know how ow Dixie gyirls ah, seh. An' yet, seh, when they marry, as they all do, where'll you find mo' devoted wives? This ain't the lan' o' divo'ces, seh; this is the lan' o' loose engagements an' tight marriages.

"D' you see that gyirl in the second row of Montroses, soft eyes, sawt o' deep-down roguish, round, straight neck, head set so nice on it? That's Gyarnet's daughteh. That gyirl's not as old as she looks, by three years."

He ceased. The chorus under the high pulpit stood up, sang, and sat again. Parson Tombs, above them, rose with extended arms, and the services had begun. The chorus stood again, and the church choir faced them from the gallery and sang with them antiphonally, to the spiritual discomfort of many who counted it the latest agony of modernness. In the long prayer the diversity of sects and fashions showed forth; but a majority tried hard not to resent any posture different from their own, although Miss Martha Salter and many others who buried their faces in their own seats, knew that Mr. Ravenel's eyes were counting the cracks in the plastering.

Barbara knelt forward – the Montrose mode. She heard Parson Tombs confess the Job-like loathsomeness of everyone present; but his long-familiar, chanting monotones fainted and died in the portals of her ears like a nurse's song, while her sinking eyelids shut not out, but in, one tallish Rosemont senior who had risen in prayer visibly heavy with the sleep he had robbed from three successive nights. The chirp of a lone cricket somewhere under the floor led her forth in a half dream beyond the town and the gleaming turnpike, across wide fields whose multitudinous, tiny life rasped and buzzed under the vibrant heat; and so on to Rosemont, dear Rosemont, and the rose mother there.

Her fan stops. An unearthly sweetness, an unconditioned bliss, a heavenly disembodiment too perfect for ecstasy, an oblivion surcharged with light, a blessed rarefaction of self that fills the house, the air, the sky, and ascends full of sweet odors and soothing sounds, wafts her up on the cadenced lullaby of the long, long prayer. Is it finished? No.

"Oh, quicken our drowsy powers!" she hears the pastor cry on a rising wave of monotone, and starts the fan again. Is she in church or in Rosemont? She sees Johanna beckoning in her old, cajoling way, asking, as in fact, not fancy, she had done the evening before, for the latest news of Cornelius, and hearing with pious thankfulness that Leggett has reappeared in his official seat, made a speech that filled the house with laughter and applause, put parties into a better humor with each other than they had been for years, and remains, and, for the present, will remain, unmolested.

Still Parson Tombs is praying. The fan waggles briskly, then more slowly – slowly – slowly, and sinks to rest on her white-robed bosom. The head, heavy with luminous brown hair, careens gently upon one cheek; that ineffably sweet dissolution into all nature and space comes again, and far up among the dream-clouds, just as she is about to recognize certain happy faces, there is a rush of sound, a flood of consternation, a start, a tumbling in of consciousness, the five senses leap to their stations, and she sits upright fluttering her fan and glancing round upon the seated congregation. The pastor has said amen.

Garnet spoke extemporaneously. The majority, who did not know every line of the sermon was written and memorized, marvelled at its facility, and even some who knew admitted it was wonderful for fervor, rhetorical richness and the skill with which it "voiced the times" without so much as touching those matters which Dixie, Rosemont's Dixie, did not want touched. Parson Tombs and others moaned "Amen," "Glory," "Thaynk Gawd," etc., after every great period. Only General Halliday said to his daughter, "He's out of focus again; claiming an exclusive freedom for his own set."

The text was, "But I was born free."

Paul, the speaker said, was as profound a believer in law as in faith. Jealous for every right of his citizenship, he might humble himself, but he never lightly allowed himself to be humbled. Law is essential to every civil order, but the very laying of it upon a man makes it his title-deed to a freedom without which obedience is not obedience, nor citizenship citizenship. No man is entirely free to fill out the full round of his whole manhood who is not in some genuine, generous way an author of the laws he obeys. "At this sacred desk and on this holy day I thank God that Dixie's noble sons and daughters are at last, after great tribulations, freer from laws and government not of their own choice than ever before since war furled its torn and blood-drenched banner! We have taught the world – and it's worth the tribulation to have taught the world – under God, that a people born with freedom in the blood cannot be forced even to do right! 'What you order me to do, alien lawmaker, may be right, but I was born free!' My first duty to God is to be free, and no freedom is freedom till it is purged of all indignity!

"But mark the limitation! Freemen are not made in a day! It was to a man who had bought his freedom that Paul boasted a sort that could not be bought! God's word for it, it takes at least two generations to make true freemen; fathers to buy the freedom and sons and daughters to be born into it! Wherefore let every one to whom race and inheritance have given beauty or talent, and to whom the divine ordering of fortune and social rank has added quality and scholarship, hold it the first of civic virtues to reply to every mandate of law or fate, Law is law, and right is right, but, first of all, I was born free, and, please God, I'll die so!

"Gentlemen of the graduating class:"

Nine trim, gray jackets rose, and John March was the tallest. The speaker proceeded, but he had not spoken many words before he saw the attention of his hearers was gone. A few smiled behind their hands or bit their lips; men kept a frowning show of listening to the address; women's faces exchanged looks of pity, and John turned red to his collar. For, just behind the Governor, the noble head and feeble frame of Judge March had risen unconsciously when his son rose, and now stood among the seated multitude, gazing on the speaker and drinking in his words with a sweet, glad face. The address went on, but no one heard it. Nor did any one move to disturb the standing figure; all Suez, nay, the very girls of Montrose knew that he who seemed to stand there with trembling knees and wabbling hands was in truth not there, but was swallowed up and lost in yonder boy.

Garnet was vexed. He shortened the address, and its last, eloquent sentence was already begun when Ravenel rose and through room swiftly made for him stepped back to Judge March. He was just in time to get an arm under his head and shoulders as he sank limply into the pew, looking up with a smile and trying to say nothing was wrong and to attend again to the speaker. Garnet's hearers were overcome, but the effect was not his. Their gaze was on the fallen man; and when General Halliday cleared his sight with an agitated handkerchief, and one by one from the son's wide open eyes, the hot, salt tears slipped down to the twitching corners of his mouth, and the aged pastor's voice trembled in a hurried benediction, women sobbed and few eyes were dry.

"Father," said John, "can you hear me? Do you know me?"

A glad light overspread the face for reply. But after it came a shadow, and Doctor Coffin said, softly,

"He's trying to ask something."

Fannie Halliday sat fanning the patient. She glanced up to Garnet just at John's back and murmured,

"He probably wants to know if – "

John turned an eager glance to his principal, and Garnet nodded "Yes."

"Father," cried John, "I've passed! I've passed, father; I've passed! Do you hear, dear father?"

The Major touched the bending youth and murmured something more. John turned back upon him a stare of incredulity, but Garnet smiled kindly and said aloud,

"I tell you yes; it will be announced to-morrow."

"Father," cried John, stooping close to the wandering eyes, "can you see me? I'm John! I'm son! Can you hear me, father? Father, I've got first honors – first honors, father! Oh, father, look into my eyes; it will be a sign that you hear me. Father, listen, look; I'm going to be a better son – to you and to mother – Oh, he hears me! He understands – " The physician drew him away.

They carried the sick man to the nearest house. Late in the afternoon Tom Hersey and two or three others were talking together near the post-office.

"Now, f'r instance, what right had he to give that boy first honors! As sho's you're a foot high, that's a piece o' pyo log-rollin'." – Doctor Coffin came by. – "Doctor, I understand Mrs. March has arrived. I hope the Jedge is betteh, seh. – What? – Why – why, you supprise – why, I'm mighty sorry to heah that, seh. – Gentlemen, Jedge March is dead."

XXIV.

THE GOLDEN SPIKE

About a week beyond the middle of June, 1878, when John March had been something like a year out of Rosemont and nine months a teacher of mountain lads and lasses at Widewood, Barbara finished at Montrose. She did not read her graduation essay. Its subject was Time. Its spelling was correct, and it was duly rosetted and streamered, but it was regretfully suppressed because its pages were mainly given to joyous emphasis of the advantages of wasting the hours. Miss Garnet had not been a breaker of rules; yet when she waved farewell and the younger Miss Kinsington turned back indoors saying,

"Dearest, best girl!" the sister added, affectionately —

"That we ever got rid of."

On a day near the middle of the following month there began almost at dawn to be a great stir in and about Suez. The sun came up over Widewood with a shout, hallooing to Rosemont a promise for all Dixie of the most ripening hours, thus far, of the year, and woods, fields, orchards, streams, answered with a morning incense. Johanna stood whispering loudly at Barbara's bedside:

"Week up, honey; sun high an' scoldin'! jess a-fuss-in' an' a-scoldin'!" One dark hand lifted back the white mosquito-net while the other tendered a cup of coffee.

Barbara winked, scowled, laid her wrists on the maid's shoulders and smiled into her black face. Johanna put away a brown wave of hair. "Come on, missie, dat-ah young Yankee gen'leman frien' up an' out."

Barbara bit her lip in mock dismay. "Has he de-part-ed?" She had a droll liking for long words, and often deployed their syllables as skirmishers in the rear for her sentences.

Johanna tittered. "Humph! you know mawnstus well he ain't gone. Miss Barb, dass de onyess maan I even see wear a baang. Wha' fuh he do dat?"

"I must ask him," said Barbara, sipping her coffee. "It's probably in fulfillment of a vow."

The maid tittered again. "You cay n't ast as much as he kin. But dass my notice 'twix Yankees an' ow folks; Dixie man say, Fine daay, seh! Yankee say, You think it a-gwine fo' to raain? Dixie man – Oh, no, seh! hit jiss cayn't rain to-day, seh! Den if it jiss po' down Yankee say, Don't dis-yeh look somepm like raain? An' Dixie man – Yass, seh, hit do; hit look like raain, but Law'! hit ain't raain. You Yankees cayn't un'stan' ow Southe'n weatheh, seh!"

Only Johanna laughed. Presently Barbara asked, "Have you seen pop-a?"

"Yo' paw? Oh, yass'm, he in de wes' grove, oveh whah we 'llowin' to buil' de new dawmontory. He jiss a-po'in' info'mations into de Yankee." Barbara laughed this time – at the Yankee – and Johanna mimicked: "Mr. Fair, yo' come to see a beautiful an' thrivin' town, seh. Suez is change' dat much yo' fatheh wouldn' know it ag'in!"

"Pop-a's right about that, Johanna."

"Oh, yass'm." Johanna was rebuked; but Barbara smiled. By and by – "Miss Barb, kin I ax you a favo'? – Yass'm. Make yo' paw put me som'ers in de crowd to-day whah I ken see you when you draps de hammeh on de golden spike – Law'! dass de dress o' dresses! You looks highly fitt'n' to eat!"

Young Fair had come to see the last spike driven in the Pulaski City, Suez and Great South Railroad.

At breakfast Mrs. Garnet poured the coffee. Garnet told the New Englander much about New England, touching extenuatingly on the blueness of its laws, the decay of its religion, and the inevitable decline of its industries. The visitor, with only an occasional "Don't you think, however" – seemed edified. It pleased Barbara to see how often, nevertheless, his eye wandered from the speaker to the head of the board to rest on one so lovely it scarce signified that she was pale and wasted; one whose genial dignity perfected the firmness with which she declined her daughter's offer to take her place and task, and smiled her down while Johanna smoothed away a grin.

The hour of nine struck. Fair looked startled. "Were we not to have joined Mr. Ravenel's party in Suez by this time?"

"Yes, but there's no hurry. Still, we'll start. Johanna, get your lunch-baskets. Sorry you don't meet Mr. March, sir; he's a trifle younger than you, but you'd like him. I asked him to go with us, but his mother – why, wa'n't that all right, Barb?"

"Oh, it wasn't wrong." Barbara smiled to her mother. "It was only useless; he always declines if I don't. We're very slightly acquainted. I hope that accounts for it." She arched her brows.

As she and the young visitor stood by the carriage while Johanna and the luncheon were being stowed he said something so graceful about Mrs. Garnet that Barbara looked into his face with delight and the Major had to speak his name twice befor he heard it. – "Ready? Yes, quite so. Shall I sit – oh! pardon; yes – in front, certainly."

The Major drove. The young guest would gladly have talked with Barbara as she sat back of him and behind her father; but Garnet held his attention. Crossing Turkey Creek battle-ground —

"Just look at those oats! See that wheat! Cotton, ah, but you ought to see the cotton down in Blackland!"

When the pike was dusty and the horses walked they were frequently overtaken and passed by cavalcades of lank, hard-faced men in dingy homespun, and cadaverous women with snuff-sticks and slouched sun-bonnets. Major Garnet bowed to them.

"Those are our Sandstone County mountaineers; our yeomanry, sir. Suez holds these three counties in a sort o' triple alliance. You make a great mistake, sir, to go off to-morrow without seeing the Widewood district. You've seen the Alps, and I'd just like to hear you say which of the two is the finer. There's enough mineral wealth in Widewood alone to make Suez a Pittsburg, and water-power enough to make her a Minneapolis, and we're going to make her both, sir!" The monologue became an avalanche of coal, red hematite, marble, mica, manganese, tar, timber, turpentine, lumber, lead, ochre, and barytes, with signs of silver, gold, and diamonds.

"Don't you think, however – "

"No, sir! no-o-o! far from it – "

A stifled laugh came from where Johanna's face darkened the corner it occupied. Barbara looked, but the maid seemed lost in sad reverie.

"Barb, yonder's where Jeff-Jack and I stopped to dine on blackberries the day we got home from the war. Now, there's the railroad cut on the far side of it. There, you see, Mr. Fair, the road skirts the creek westward and then northwestward again, leaving Rosemont a mile to the northeast. See that house, Barb, about half a mile beyond the railroad? There's where the man found his plumbago." The speaker laughed and told the story. The discoverer had stolen off by night, got an expert to come and examine it, and would tell the result only to one friend, and in a whisper. "'You haven't got much plumbago,' the expert had said, 'but you've got dead oodles of silica.' You know, Barb, silica's nothing but flint, ha-ha!"