Their reception at Wesley, the ancestral home of the Costons, although it was late at night when they arrived, was none the less joyous. Peggy was the first to welcome the invalid, and Tom was not far behind.
“Give her to me, St. George,” bubbled Peggy, enfolding the girl in her arms. “You blessed thing! Oh, how glad I am to get hold of you! They told me you were ill, child—not a word of truth in it! No, Mr. Coston, you sha'n't even have one of her little fingers until I get through loving her. What's your mammy's name—Henny? Well, Henny, you take Miss Kate's things into her room—that one at the top of the stairs.”
And then the Honorable Tom Coston said he'd be doggoned if he was going to wait another minute, and he didn't—for Kate kissed him on both cheeks and gave him her father's message, congratulating him on his appointment as judge, and thanking him in advance for all the kindness he would show his daughter.
But it was not until she awoke next morning and looked out between the posts of her high bedstead through the small, wide-open window overlooking the bay that her heart gave the first bound of real gladness. She loved the sky and the dash of salt air, laden now with the perfume of budding fruit trees, that blew straight in from the sea. She loved, too, the stir and sough of the creaking pines and the cheery calls from the barnyard. Here she could get her mind settled; here, too, she could forget all the little things that had bothered her—there would be no more invitations to accept or decline; no promises she must keep. She and her Uncle George could have one long holiday—she needed it and, goodness knows, he needed it after all his troubles—and they would begin as soon as breakfast was over. And they did—the dogs plunging ahead, the two hand in hand, St. George, guide and philosopher, pointing out this and that characteristic feature of the once famous estate and dilating on its past glory.
“Even in my father's day,” he continued, his face lighting up, “it was one of the great show places of the county. The stables held twenty horses and a coach, besides no end of gigs and carryalls. This broad road on which we walk was lined with flower-beds and shaded by live-oaks. Over there, near that little grove, were three great barns and lesser out-buildings, besides the negro quarters, smoke-houses, and hay-ricks. Really a wonderful place in its day, Kate.”
Then he went on to tell of how the verandas were shaded with honeysuckles, and the halls, drawing-rooms, and dining-room crowded with furniture; how there were yellow damask curtains, and screens, and hair-cloth sofas and a harmonicon of musical glasses which was played by wetting one's fingers in a bowl of water and passing them over the rims—he had played on it himself when a boy; and slaves galore—nearly one hundred of them, not to mention a thousand acres of tillable land to plough and harrow, as well as sheep, oxen, pigs, chickens, ducks—everything that a man of wealth and position might have had in the old days, and about every one of which St. George had a memory.
Then when Tom's father, who was the sole heir, took charge (here his voice dropped to a whisper) dissolution proceedings set in—and Tom finished them! and St. George sighed heavily as he pointed out the changes:—the quarters in ruins, the stables falling to pieces, the gates tied up with strings or swinging loose; and the flocks, herds, and live-stock things of the past. Nor had a negro been left—none Tom really owned: one by one they had been sold or hired out, or gone off nobody knew where, he being too lazy, or too indifferent, or too good-natured, to hunt them up. The house, as Kate had seen, was equally neglected. Even what remained of the old furniture was on its last legs—the curtains patched, or in shreds—the carpets worn into holes.
Kate listened eagerly, but she did not sigh. It was all charming to her in the soft spring sunshine, the air a perfume, the birds singing, the blossoms bursting, the peach-trees anthems of praise—and best of all her dear Uncle George strolling at her side. And then everything was so clean and fresh and sweet in every nook and corner of the tumble-down house. Peggy, as she soon discovered, looked after that—in fact Peggy looked after everything that required looking after—and everything did—including the judge. Mr. Coston was tired, Peggy would say, or Mr. Coston had not been very well, so she just did it herself instead of bothering him. Since his promotion it was generally “the judge” who was too tired, being absorbed in his court duties, etc., etc. But it always came with a laugh, and it was always genuine, for to wait upon him and look after him and minister to him was her highest happiness.
Good for nothing as he would have been to some women—unpractical, lazy—a man few sensible wives would have put up with—Peggy adored him; and so did his children adore him, and so, for that matter, did his neighbors, many of whom, although they ridiculed him behind his back, could never escape the charm of his personality whenever they sat beside his rocking-chair.
This chair—the only comfortable chair in the house, by the way—had, in his less distinguished days, been his throne. In it he would sit all day long, cutting and whittling, filing and polishing curious trinkets of tortoise-shell for watch-guards and tiny baskets made of cherry-stones, cunningly wrought and finished. He was an expert, too, in corn-cob pipes, which he carved for all his friends; and pin-wheels for everybody's children. When it came, however, to such matters as a missing hinge to the front door, a brick under a tottering chimney, the straightening of a falling fence, the repairing of a loose lock on the smoke-house—or even the care of the family carryall, which despite its great age and infirmities was often left out in the rain to rust and ruin—these things must, of course, wait until the overworked father of the house found time to look after them.
The children loved him the most. They asked for nothing better than to fix him in his big chair by the fender, throw upon the fire a basket of bark chips from the wood-yard, and enough pitch-pine knots to wake them up, and after filling his pipe and lighting it, snuggle close—every bend and curve of the wide-armed splint-bottomed comfort packed full, all waiting to hear him tell one of his stories. Sometimes it was the tale of the fish and the cuff-button—how he once dropped his sleeve-link overboard, and how a year afterward he was in a shallop on the Broadwater fishing for rockflsh when he caught a splendid fellow, which when Aunt Patience cleaned—(here his voice would drop to a whisper)—“What do you think!—why out popped the sleeve-link that was in his cuff this minute!” And for the hundredth time the bit of gold would be examined by each child in turn. Or it was the witch story—about the Yahoo wild man with great horns and a lashing tail, who lived in the swamp and went howling and prowling about for plunder and prey. (This was always given with a low, prolonged growl, like a dog in pain—all the children shuddering.) And then followed the oft-told tale of how this same terrible Yahoo once came up with Hagar, who was riding a witch pony to get to the witches' dance in the cane-brake, and how he made off with her to the swamp, where she had had to cook for him—ever—ever—ever since. (Long-drawn breath, showing that all was over for that day at least.)
Todd got the true inwardness of the situation before he had been many days at Wesley: for the scene with the children was often repeated when court was not in session.
“Fo' Gawd, Marse George, hab you had time to watch dat gemman, de jedge? Dey do say he's sumpin' great, but I tell ye he's dat lazy a fly stuck in 'lasses 'd pass him on de road.”
St. George laughed heartily in reply, but he did not reprimand him.
“What makes you think so, Todd?”
“Can't help thinkin' so. I wuz standin' by de po'ch yisterday holdin' Miss Kate's mare, when I yere de mistis ask de jedge ter go out an' git 'er some kindlin' f'om de wood-pile. He sot a-rockin' hisse'f in dat big cheer ob his'n an' I yered him say—'Yes, in a minute,' but he didn't move. Den she holler ag'in at him an' still he rock hisse'f, sayin' he's comin'. Den, fust thing I knowed out she come to de woodpile an' git it herse'f, an' den when she pass him wid 'er arms full o' wood he look up an' say—'Peggy, come yere an' kiss me—I dunno what we'd do widout ye—you'se de Lawd's anointed, sho'.'”
Kate got no end of amusement out of him, and would often walk with him to court that she might listen to his drolleries—especially his queer views of life—the simplest and most unaffected to which she had ever bent her ears. Now and then, as time went on, despite her good-natured toleration of his want of independence—he being always dominated by his wife—she chanced, to her great surprise, upon some nuggets of hard common-sense of so high an assay that they might really be graded as wisdom—his analysis of men and women being particularly surprising. Those little twinkling, and sometimes sleepy, eyes of his, now that she began to study him the closer, reminded her of the unreadable eyes of an elephant she had once seen—eyes that presaged nothing but inertia, until whack went the trunk and over toppled the boy who had teased him.
And with this new discovery there developed at last a certain respect for the lazy, good-natured, droll old man. Opinions which she had heretofore laughed at suddenly became of value; criticisms which she had passed over in silence seemed worthy of further consideration.
Peggy, however, fitted into all the tender places of her heart. She had never known her own mother; all she remembered was a face bending close and a soft hand that tucked in the coverlet one night when she couldn't sleep. The memory had haunted her from the days of her childhood—clear and distinct, with every detail in place. Had there been light enough in her mother's bed-room, she was sure she could have added the dear face itself to her recollection. Plump, full-bosomed, rosy-cheeked Peggy (fifteen years younger than Tom) supplied the touch and voice, and all the tenderness as well, that these sad memories recalled, and all that the motherless girl had yearned for.
And the simple, uneventful life—one without restraints of any kind, greatly satisfied her: so different from her own at home with Prim as Chief Regulator. Everybody, to her delight, did as they pleased, each one following the bent of his or her inclination. St. George was out at daybreak in the duck-blinds, or, breakfast over, roaming the fields with his dogs, Todd a close attendant. The judge would stroll over to court an hour or more late, only to find an equally careless and contented group blocking up the door—“po' white trash” most of them, each one with a grievance. Whenever St. George accompanied him, and he often did, his Honor would spend even less time on the bench—cutting short both ends of the session, Temple laughing himself sore over the judge's decisions.
“And he stole yo' shoat and never paid for him?” he heard his honor say one day in a hog case, where two farmers who had been waiting hours for Tom's coming were plaintiff and defendant. “How did you know it was yo' shoat—did you mark him?”
“No, suh.”
“Tie a tag around his neck?”
“No, suh.”
“Well, you just keep yo' hogs inside yo' lot. Too many loose hogs runnin' 'round. Case is dismissed and co't is adjourned for the day,” which, while very poor law, was good common-sense, stray hogs on the public highway having become a nuisance.
With these kindly examples before her, Kate soon fell into the ways of the house. If she did not wish to get up she lay abed and Peggy brought her breakfast with her own hands. If, when she did leave her bed, she went about in pussy-slippers and a loose gown of lace and frills without her stays, Peggy's only protest was against her wearing anything else—so adorable was she. When this happy, dreamy indolence began to pall upon her—and she could not stand it for long—she would be up at sunrise helping Peggy wash and dress her frolicsome children or get them off to school, and this done, would assist in the housework—even rolling the pastry with her own delicate palms, or sitting beside the bubbling, spontaneous woman, needle in hand, aiding with the family mending—while Peggy, glad of the companionship, would sit with ears open, her mind alert, probing—probing—trying to read the heart of the girl whom she loved the better every day. And so there had crept into Kate's heart a new peace that was as fresh sap to a dying plant, bringing the blossoms to her cheeks and the spring of wind-blown branches to her step.
Then one fine morning, to the astonishment of every one, and greatly to Todd's disgust, no less a person than Mr. Langdon Willits of “Oak Hill” (distant three miles away) dismounted at Coston's front porch, and throwing the reins to the waiting darky, stretched his convalescent, but still shaky, legs in the direction of the living-room, there to await the arrival of “Miss Seymour of Kennedy Square,” who, so he informed Todd, “expected him.”
Todd scraped a foot respectfully in answer, touched his cocoanut of a head with his monkey claw of a finger, waited until the broad back of the red-headed gentleman had been swallowed up by the open door, and then indulged in this soliloquy:
“Funny de way dem bullets hab o' missin' folks. Des a leetle furder down an' dere wouldn't 'a' been none o' dis yere foolishness. Pity Marse Harry hadn't practised some mo'. Ef he had ter do it ag'in I reckon he'd pink him so he neber be cavortin' 'roun' like he is now.”
Willits's sudden appearance filled St. George with ill-concealed anxiety. He did not believe in this parade of invalidism, nor did he like Kate's encouraging smile when she met him—and there was no question that she did smile—and, more portentous still, that she enjoyed it. Other things, too, she grew to enjoy, especially the long rides in the woods and over to the broad water. For Willits's health after a few days of the sunshine of Kate's companionship had undergone so renovating a process that the sorrel horse now arrived at the porch almost every day, whereupon Kate's Joan would be led out, and the smiled-upon gentleman in English riding-boots and brown velvet jacket and our gracious lady in Lincoln green habit with wide hat and sweeping plume would mount their steeds and be lost among the pines.
Indeed, to be exact, half of Kate's time was now spent in the saddle, Willits riding beside her. And with each day's outing a new and, to St. George, a more disturbing intimacy appeared to be growing between them. Now it was Willits's sister who had to be considered and especially invited to Wesley—a thin wisp of a woman with tortoise-shell sidecombs and bunches of dry curls, who always dressed in shiny black silk and whose only ornament was her mother's hair set in a breastpin; or it was his father by whom she must sit when he came over in his gig—a bluff, hearty man who generally wore a red waistcoat with big bone buttons and high boots with tassels in front.
This last confidential relation, when the manners and bearing of the elder man came under his notice, seemed to St. George the most unaccountable of all. Departures from the established code always jarred upon him, and the gentleman in the red waistcoat and tasselled boots often wandered so far afield that he invariably set St. George's teeth on edge. Although he had never met Kate before, he called her by her first name after the first ten minutes of their acquaintance—his son, he explained, having done nothing but sound her praises for the past two years, an excuse which carried no weight in gentleman George's mind because of its additional familiarity. He had never dared, he knew, to extend that familiarity to Peggy—it had always been “Mrs. Coston” to her and it had always been “Mr. Coston” to Tom, and it was now “your Honor” or “judge” to the dispenser of justice. For though the owner of Oak Hill lived within a few miles of the tumble-down remnant that sheltered the Costons; and though he had fifty servants to their one, or half a one—and broad acres in proportion, to say nothing of flocks and herds—St. George had always been aware that he seldom crossed their porch steps or they his. That little affair of some fifty or more years ago was still remembered, and the children of people who did that sort of thing must, of course, pay the penalty. Even Peggy never failed to draw the line. “Very nice people, my dear,” he had heard her say to Kate one day when the subject of the younger man's family had come up. “Mr. Willits senior is a fine, open-hearted man, and does a great deal of good in the county with his money—quite a politician, and they do say has a fair chance of some time being governor of the State. But very few of us about here would want to marry into the family, all the same. Oh no, my dear Kate, of course there was nothing against his grandmother. She was a very nice woman, I believe, and I've often heard my own mother speak of her. Her father came from Albemarle Sound, if I am right, and was old John Willits's overseer. The girl was his daughter.”
Kate had made no answer. Who Langdon Willits's grandmother was, or whether he had any grandmother at all, did not concern her in the least. She rather admired the young Albemarle Sound girl for walking boldly into the Willits family—low born as she was—and making them respect her.
But none of Peggy's outspoken warnings nor any of St. George's silent acceptances of the several situations—always a mark of his disapproval—checked the game of love-making which was going on—the give-and-take stage of it, with the odds varying with each new shifting of the cards, both Peggy and St. George growing the more nervous.
“She's going to accept him, St. George,” Peggy had said to him one morning as he stood behind her chair while she was shelling the peas for dinner. “I didn't think so when he first came, but I believe it now. I have said all I could to her. She has cuddled up in my arms and cried herself sick over it, but she won't hold out much longer. Young Rutter left her heart all torn and bleeding and this man has bound up the sore places. She will never love anybody that way again—and may be it is just as well. He'd have kept her guessing all her life as to what he'd do next. I wish Willits's blood was better, for she's a dear, sweet child and proud as she can be, only she's proud over different things from what I would be. But you can make up your mind to it—she'll keep him dangling for a while yet, as she did last summer at the Red Sulphur, but she'll be his wife in a year or less—you mark my words. You haven't yet heard from the first one, have you?—as to when he's coming home?”
St. George hadn't heard—he sighed in return—a habit of his lately: No, not for two months or more—not since the letter in which Harry said he had left the ship and had gone up into the interior. He had, he told her, mentioned the boy's silence to Kate in a casual way, watching the effect the news produced upon her—but after the remark that the mails were always irregular from those far-away countries, she had turned the conversation into other channels, she having caught sight of Willits, who had just dismounted from his horse.
As to St. George's own position in the affair he felt that his hands were still so firmly tied that he could do nothing one way or the other. His personal intercourse with Willits had been such as he would always have with a man with whom he was on speaking terms, but it never passed that border. He was courteous, careful of his speech, and mindful of the young man's devotion to Kate, whose guardian for the time being he was, but he neither encouraged nor thwarted his suit. Kate was of age and was fully competent to decide for herself—extremely competent, for that matter.
How little this clear reader of women's hearts—and scores had been spread out before him—knew of Kate's, no one but the girl herself could have told. That she was adrift on an open sea without a rudder, and that she had already begun to lose confidence both in her seamanship and in her compass, was becoming more and more apparent to her every day she lived. All she knew positively was that she had been sailing before the wind for some weeks past with everything flying loose, and that the time had now come for her either to “go about” or keep on her course.
Her suitor's family she had carefully considered. She had also studied his environment and the impression he made upon those who had known him longest:—she must now focus her mental lenses on the man himself. He had, she knew, graduated with honors, being the valedictorian of his class; had risen rapidly in his profession, and, from what her father said, would soon reach a high place among his brother lawyers. There was even talk of sending him to the legislature, where her own father, the Honorable Prim, had achieved his title. She wished, of course, that Mr. Willits's hair was not quite so red; she wished, too, that the knuckles on his hands were not so large and bony—and that he was not always at her beck and call; but these, she was forced to admit, were trifles in the make-up of a fine man. There was, however, a sane mind under the carrot-colored hair and a warm palm inside the knotted knuckles, and that was infinitely more important than little physical peculiarities which one would forget as life went on. As to his periods of ill health, these she herself could have prevented had she told him the whole truth that night on the stairs, or the day before when she had parried his direct proposal of marriage—a piece of stupidity for which she never failed to blame herself.
His future conduct did not trouble her in the least. She had long since become convinced that Willits would never again become intemperate. He had kept his promise, and this meant more to her than his having given way to past temptations. The lesson he had learned at the ball had had, too, its full effect. One he had never forgotten. Over and over again he had apologized to her for his brutal insolence in laying his profane hands on her dancing-card and tearing it to bits before her eyes. He had, moreover, deeply regretted the duel and had sworn to her on his honor as a gentleman that he would never fight another.
Each time she had listened quietly and had told him how much she was pleased and how grateful she was for his confidence and how such fine resolutions redounded to his credit, and yet in thinking it over the next day she could not help comparing his meek outbursts of sorrow with Harry's blunt statement made to her the last time she saw him in the park, when, instead of expressing any regret for having shot Willits, he had boldly declared that he would do it again if any such insult were repeated. And strange to say—and this she could not understand in herself—in all such comparisons Harry came out best.
But:—and here she had to hold on to her rudder with all her might—she had already made one mistake, tumbling head over heels in love with a young fellow who had mortified her before the world when their engagement was less than a few months old, making her name and affections a byword, and she could not and would not repeat the blunder. This had shattered her customary self-reliance, leaving her wellnigh helpless. Perhaps after all—an unheard-of thing in her experience—she had better seek advice of some older and wiser pilot. Two heads, or even three—(here her canny Scotch blood asserted itself)—were better than one in deciding so important a matter as the choosing of a mate for life. And yet—now she came to think it over—it was not so much a question of heads as it was a question of shoulders on which the heads rested. To turn to St. George, or to any member of the Willits kin, was impossible. Peggy's views she understood. Counsel, however, she must have, and at once.
Suddenly an inspiration thrilled her like an electric shock—one that sent the blood tingling to the very roots of her hair. Why had she not thought of it before! And it must be in the most casual way—quite as a matter of general conversation, he doing all the talking and she doing all the listening, for on no account must he suspect her purpose.
Within the hour she had tied the ribbons of her wide leghorn hat under her dimpled chin, picked up her shawl, and started off alone, following the lane to the main road. If the judge, by any chance, had adjourned court he would come straight home and she would meet him on the way. If he was still engaged in the dispensation of justice, she would wait for him outside.
She had judged wisely. Indeed she might have waited for days for some such moment and not found so favorable an opportunity. His Honor had already left the bench and was then slowly making his way toward where she stood, hugging the sidewalk trees the better to shade him from the increasing heat. As the day had promised to be an unusually warm one, he had attired himself in a full suit of yellow nankeen, with palm-leaf fan and wide straw hat—a combination which so matched the color and texture of his placid, kindly face that Kate could hardly keep from laughing outright. Instead she quickened her steps until she stood beside him, her lovely, fresh color heightened by her walk, her eyes sparkling, her face wreathed in smiles.
“You are lookin' mighty cute, my Lady Kate, in yo' Paisley shawl and sarsanet pelisse,” he called out in his hearty, cheery way. “Has Peggy seen 'em? I've been tryin' to get her some just like 'em, only my co't duties are so pressin'. Goodness, gracious me!—but it's gettin' hot!” Here he stopped and mopped his face, then his eyes fell upon her again: “Bless my soul, child!—you do look pretty this mornin'—jest like yo' mother! Where did you get all those pink and white apple-blossoms in yo' cheeks?”
“Do you remember her, Mr. Coston?” she rejoined, ignoring his compliment.
“Do I remember her! The belle of fo' counties, my dear—eve'ybody at her feet; five or six gentlemen co'tin' her at once; old Captain Barkeley, cross as a bear—wouldn't let her marry this one or that one—kep' her guessin' night and day, till one of 'em blew his brains out, and then she fainted dead away. Pretty soon yo' father co'ted her, and bein' Scotch, like the old captain and sober as an owl and about as cunnin', it wasn't long befo' everything was settled. Very nice man, yo' father—got to have things mighty partic'lar; we young bucks used to say he slept in a bag of lavender and powdered his cheeks every mornin' to make him look fresh, while most of us were soakin' wet in the duck-blinds—but that was only our joke. That's long befo' you were born, child. But yo' mother didn't live long—they said her heart was broken 'bout the other fellow, but there wasn't a word of truth in that foolishness—couldn't be. I used to see her and yo' father together long after that, and she was mighty good to him, and he was to her. Yes—all comes back to me. Stand still, child, and let me look at you—yes—you're plumper than yo' mother and a good deal rosier, and you don't look so slender and white as she did, like one of those pale Indian pipes she used to hunt in the woods. It's the Seymour in you that's done that, I reckon.”
Kate walked on in silence. It was not the first time that some of her mother's old friends had told her practically the same story—not so clearly, perhaps, because few had the simple, outspoken candor of the old fellow, but enough to let her know that her father was not her mother's first love.
“Don't be in a hurry, child, and don't let anybody choose for you,” he ran on. “Peggy and I didn't make any mistakes—and don't you. Now this young son of Parker Willits's”—here his wrinkled face tightened up into a pucker as if he had just bitten into an unripe persimmon—“good enough young man, may be; goin' to be something great, I reckon—in Mr. Taney's office, I hear, or will be next winter. I 'spect he'll keep out of jail—most Willitses do—but keep an eye on him and watch him, and watch yo'self too. That's more important still. The cemetery is a long ways off when you marry the wrong man, child. And that other fellow that Peggy tells me has been co'tin' you—Talbot Rutter's boy—he's a wild one, isn't he?—drunk half the time and fightin' everybody who don't agree with him. Come pretty nigh endin' young Willits, so they say. Now I hear he's run away to sea and left all his debts behind. Talbot turned him neck and heels out of doors when he found it out, so they tell me—and served the scapegrace right. Don't be in a hurry, child. Right man will come bime-by. Just the same with Peggy till I come along—there she is now, bless her sweet heart! Peggy, you darlin'—I got so lonely for you I just had to 'journ co't. I've been telling Lady Kate that she mustn't be in a hurry to get married till she finds somebody that will make her as happy as you and me.” Here the judge slipped his arm around Peggy's capacious waist and the two crossed the pasture as the nearest way to the house.
Kate kept on her way alone.
Her only reply to the garrulous judge had been one of her rippling laughs, but it was the laughter of bubbles with the sediment lying deep in the bottom of the glass.
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