In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim

His audience broke into a shout of enjoyment.

“Dat ’ar incerdent stirred up my paketriotit feelin’s consider’ble at de moment. I couldn’t seem to see it in de light what p’raps I oughter seen it in. I rared roun’ a good deal, an’ fer a moment er two, I didn’t seem tar mind which side beat de oder. Jest dat ’casion. I doan’ say de sentiment continnered on, but jest dat ’casion seemed ter me like dar was a Yank somewhars es I wouldn’t hev ben agin seein’ takin’ a whuppin’ from some’un, Secesh or no Secesh.”

“What else did ye lose, Unc’ Matt?” someone said when the laugh died down.

“Well, I lose a wife—kinder cook dat dar ain’t no ’demnity kin make up fer when de Lawd’s removed ’em. An’ ’pears to me right dar, dat if I wusn’t a chu’ch member, I shed be led on ter say dat, considerin’ what a skaseness er good cooks dar is, seems like de good Lawd’s almost wasteful an’ stravagant, de way he lets ’em die off. Three uv ’em he ’moved from me to a better worl’. Not as I’m a man what’d wanter be sackerligious; but ’pears to me dar was mo’ wuk fur ’em to do in dis hyer dark worl’ er sin dan in de realms er glory. I may be wrong, but dat’s how it seem to a pore nigger like me.”

“The Government won’t pay for yer wife, Matt,” said the owner of the market waggon.

“Dat dey won’t, en dat dey cayn’t,” said Matt. “Dat las’ woman’s gumbo soup warn’t a thing to be ’demnified fer, dat it warn’t. But what I’m a aimin’ at is to fin’ out what dey will pay fer, en how much. Dar was one mawnin’ I sot at my do’ reflectin’ on de Gawsp’l, an’ de Yanks come jest a tarin’ down de road, licketty switch, licketty switch, yellin’ like de debil let loose, en firin’ of dere pistols, an’ I gotter ’fess I los’ a heap a courage dat time—an’ I los’ a heap o’ breath runnin’ ’way from ’em en outer sight. Now I know de Gov’ment not gwine ter pay me fer losin’ dem things, but what is dey gwine pay for losin’?”

“Property, they say—crops ‘n’ houses, ‘n’ barns, ‘n’ truck wuth money.”

Uncle Matt removed his hat, and looked into the crown of it as if for instruction before he wiped his forehead and put it on again.

“Aye-yi! Dey is, is dey?” he said. “Property—en houses, en barns, en truck wuth money? Dey’ll hev a plenty to pay, ef dey begins dat game, won’t dey? Dey’ll hev ter dig down inter de Gov’ment breeches pocket pretty deep, dat dey will. Doan’ see how de Pres’dent gwine ter do it out’n what dey ’lows him, less’n dey ’lows him mighty big pocket money.”

“’Tain’t the President, Matt,” said one of the crowd. “It’s the Nation.”

“Oh, it’s de Nation!” said Matt. “De Nation. Well, Mr. Nation gwine fin’ he got plenty ter do—early en late.”

This was not the last time he led the talk in the direction of Government claims, and in the course of his marketings and droppings into various stores and young lawyers’ offices, he gathered a good deal of information. Claims upon the Government had not been so far exploited in those days as they were a little later, and knowledge of such business and its processes was not as easily obtainable by unbusiness-like persons.

One morning, as he stood at the street corner nearest the Claim Agent’s office, a little man came out of the place, and by chance stopped to cool himself for a few moments under the shade of the very maple tree Uncle Matt had chosen.

He was a very small man, wearing very large pantaloons, and he had a little countenance whose expression was a curious combination of rustic vacancy and incongruous slyness. He was evidently from the country, and Uncle Matt’s respectable, in fact, rather aristocratic air, apparently attracted his attention.

“’Scuse me, sah,” said Matt, “’scuse me addressin’ of you, but dem ar Claim Agents——?”

“Hev ye got a claim?” said the little man in words that were slow, but with an air that was sharp. “I mean, has anyone ye work fur got one?”

“Well, sah,” answered Matt, “I ain’t sartain, but——”

“Ye’d better make sartain,” said the little man. “Bein’ es the thing’s started the way it hes, anyone es might hev a claim an’ lets it lie, is a derned fool. I come from over the mountain. My name’s Stamps, and I’ve got one.”

Uncle Matt regarded him with interest—not exactly with respect, but with interest.

Stamps took off his battered broad-brimmed hat, wiped his moist forehead and expectorated, leaning against the tree.

“Thar’s people in this town as is derned fools,” he remarked, sententiously. “Thar’s people in most every town in the Union as is derned fools. Most everybody’s got a claim to suthin’, if they’d only got the common horse sense ter look it up. Why, look at that yoke o’ oxen o’ mine—the finest yoke o’ steers in Hamlin County. Would hev took fust ticket at any Agricultural Fair in the United States. I ain’t goin’ to sacceryfist them steers to no Stars an’ Stripes as ever floated. The Guv’ment’s got to pay me the wuth of ’em down to the last cent.”

He gave Matt a sharp look with a hint of inquiry in it, as if he was asking either his hearer or himself a question, and was not entirely certain of the answer.

“Now thar’s D’Willerby,” he went on. “Big Tom—Tom D’Willerby lost enough, the Lord knows. Fust one army, ‘n’ then another layin’ holt on his stock as it come over the road from one place an’ another, a-eatin’ of it up ‘n’ a-wearin’ his goods made up into shirts ‘n’ the like-‘n’ him left a’most cleaned out o’ everythin’. Why, Tom D’Willerby——”

“’Scuse me, sah,” interrupted Matt, “but did you say De Willoughby?”

“I said D’Willerby,” answered Mr. Stamps. “That’s what he’s called at the Cross-roads.”

There he stopped and stared at Matt a moment.

“My young master’s name’s De Willoughby, sah,” Matt said; “‘n’ de names soun’s mighty simulious when dey’s spoke quick. My young Marse, Rupert De Willoughby, he de gran’son er Jedge De Willoughby, an’ de son an’ heir er Cun’l De Courcy De Willoughby what died er yaller fever at Nashville.”

“Well, I’m doggoned,” the little man remarked, “I’d orter thought er thet. This yere’s Delisleville, ‘n’ I reckerlect hearin’ when fust he come to Hamlin thet he was some kin to some big bugs down ter D’lisleville, ‘n’ his father was a Jedge—doggoned ef I didn’t!”

Rupert De Willoughby was lying upon the grass in the garden under the shade of a tree. The “office” had been stifling hot, and there had been even less to suggest any hope of possible professional business than the blankness of most days held. There never was any business, but at rare intervals someone dropped in and asked him a question or so, his answers to which, by the exercise of imagination, might be regarded as coming under the head of “advice.” His clients had no money, however—nobody had any money; and his affairs were assuming a rather desperate aspect.

He had come home through the hot streets with his straw hat pushed back, the moist rings of his black hair lying on a forehead lined with a rather dark frown. He went into the garden and threw himself on the grass in the shade. He could be physically at ease there, at least. The old garden had always been a pleasure to him, and on a hot summer day it was full of sweet scents and sounds he was fond of. At this time there were tangles of honeysuckle and bushes heavy with mock-orange; an arbour near him was covered by a multiflora rose, weighted with masses of its small, delicate blossoms; within a few feet of it a bed of mignonette grew, and the sun-warmed breathing of all these fragrant things was a luxurious accompaniment to the booming of the bees, blundering and buzzing in and out of their flowers, and the summer languid notes of the stray birds which lit on the branches and called to each other among the thick leaves.

At twenty-three a man may be very young. Rupert was both young and old. His silent resentment of the shadow which he felt had always rested upon him, had become a morbid thing. It had led him to seclude himself from the gay little Delisleville world and cut himself off from young friendships. After his mother—who had understood his temperament and his resentment—had died, nobody cared very much for him. The youth of Delisleville was picturesque, pleasure-loving, and inconsequent. It had little parties at which it danced; it had little clubs which were vaguely musical or literary; and it had an ingenuous belief in the talents and graces displayed at these gatherings. The feminine members of these societies were sometimes wonderfully lovely. They were very young, and had soft eyes and soft Southern voices, and were the owners of the tiniest arched feet and the slenderest little, supple waists in the world. Until they were married—which usually happened very early—they were always being made love to and knew that this was what God had made them for—that they should dance a great deal, that they should have many flowers and bonbons laid at their small feet, that beautiful youths with sentimental tenor voices should serenade them with guitars on moonlight nights, which last charming thing led them to congratulate themselves on having been born in the South, as such romantic incidents were not a feature of life in New York and Boston. The masculine members were usually lithe and slim, and often of graceful height; they frequently possessed their share of good looks, danced and rode well, and could sing love songs. As it was the portion of their fair companions to be made love to, it was theirs to make love. They often wrote verses, and they also were given to arched insteps and eyes with very perceptible fringes. For some singular reason, it seems that Southern blood tends to express itself in fine eyes and lashes.

But with this simply emotional and happy youth young De Willoughby had not amalgamated. Once he had gone to a dance, and his father the Colonel had appeared upon the scene as a spectator in a state of exaggeratedly graceful intoxication. He was in the condition when he was extremely gallant and paid flowery compliments to each pair of bright eyes he chanced to find himself near.

When he first caught sight of him, Rupert was waltzing with a lovely little creature who was a Vanuxem and was not unlike the Delia Tom De Willoughby had fallen hopelessly in love with. When he saw his father a flash of scarlet shot over the boy’s face, and, passing, left him looking very black and white. His brow drew down into its frown, and he began to dance with less spirit. When the waltz was at an end, he led his partner to her seat and stood a moment silently before her, glancing under his black lashes at the Colonel, who had begun to quote Thomas Moore and was declaiming “The Young May Moon” to a pretty creature with a rather alarmed look in her uplifted eyes. It was the first dance at which she had appeared since she had left school.

Suddenly Rupert turned to his partner. He made her a bow; he was a graceful young fellow.

“Thank you, Miss Vanuxem. Thank you for the dance. Good-night. I am going home.”

“Are you?” exclaimed little Miss Vanuxem. “But it is so early, Mr. De Willoughby.”

“I have stayed just ten minutes too long now,” said Rupert. “Thank you again, Miss Vanuxem. Good-night.”

He walked across the room to Colonel De Willoughby.

“I am going home,” he said, in a low, fierce voice; “you had better come with me.”

“No sush thing,” answered the Colonel, gaily. “On’y just come. Don’t go to roosh with shickens. Just quoting Tom Moore to Miss Baxter.

The little beauty, who had turned with relieved delight to take the arm of a new partner, looked at her poetic admirer apologetically.

“Mr. Gaines has come for me, Colonel De Willoughby,” she said; “I am engaged to him for this dance.” And she slipped away clinging almost tenderly to the arm of her enraptured escort, who felt himself suddenly transformed into something like a hero.

“Colonel De Willoughby is so flattering,” she said; “and he has such a queer way of paying compliments. I’m almost frightened of him.”

“I will see that he does not speak to you again,” said her partner, with an air of magnificent courage. “He should not have been allowed to come in. You, of course, could not understand, but—the men who are here will protect the ladies who are their guests.”

Rupert gave his father a long look and turned on his heel. He went home, and the next time the Terpsichorean Society invited him to a dance he declined to go.

“Nice fellow I am to go to such places,” he said to himself. “Liable to bring a drunken lunatic down upon them at any minute. No, the devil take it all, I’m going to stay at home!”

He stayed at home, and gradually dropped out of the young, glowing, innocently frivolous and happy world altogether, and it carried on its festivities perfectly well without him. The selfishness of lovely youth is a guileless, joyous thing, and pathetic inasmuch as maturity realises the undue retribution which befalls it as it learns of life.

When poverty and loneliness fell upon him, the boy had no youthful ameliorations, even though he was so touchingly young. Occasionally some old friend of his grandfather’s encountered him somewhere and gave him rather florid good advice; some kindly matron, perhaps, asked him to come and see her; but there was no one in the place who could do anything practical. Delisleville had never been a practical place, and now its day seemed utterly over. Its gentlemanly pretence at business had received blows too heavy to recover from until times had lapsed; in some of the streets tiny tufts of grass began to show themselves between the stones.

As he had walked back in the heat, Rupert had observed these tiny tufts of green with a new sense of their meaning. He was thinking of them as he lay upon the grass, the warm scent of the mock-orange blossoms and roses, mingled with honeysuckle in the air, the booming of the bees among the multiflora blooms was in his ears.

“What can I do?” he said to himself. “There is nothing to be done here. There never was much, and now there is nothing. I can’t loaf about and starve. I won’t beg from people, and if I would, I haven’t a relation left who isn’t a beggar himself—and there are few enough of them left.”

He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a well-worn greenback. He straightened out its creases cautiously and looked at it.

“I’ve got two dollars,” he said, “and no prospect of getting any more. Even Matt can’t make two dollars last long.”

The latch of the side gate clicked and the gate opened. Presently Uncle Matt appeared round the rose-bushes. He had his market basket on his arm and wore a thoughtful countenance.

“Uncle Matt!” Rupert called out to him. “I wish you would come here.”

Notwithstanding his darkling moods, he was in a subtle way singularly like Delia Vanuxem. He needed love and tenderness, and he was boy enough yet to be unhappy and desolate through lack of them, though without quite knowing why. He knew Uncle Matt loved him, and the affectionate care the old man surrounded him with was like a warm robe wrapped about a creature suffering from chill. He had not analyzed his feeling himself; he only knew that he liked to hear his footsteps as he pottered about the house, and when he was at his dreariest, he was glad to see him come in, and to talk a little to him.

Uncle Matt came towards him briskly. He set his basket down and took off his hat.

“Marse Rupert,” he said, “dis hyer’s a pow’fle scorcher of a mawnin’. Dem young lawyers as shets up dey office an’ comes home to lie in de grass in de shade, dey is follerin’ up dey perfession in de profitablest way—what’ll be likely to bring ’em de mos’ clients, ’cause, sho’s yo’ bawn, dere’s sunstroke an’ ’cussion or de brain just lopin’ roun’ dis town—en a little hot brick office ain’t no place for a young man what got any dispect fur his next birfday. Dat’s so.”

“I haven’t much respect for mine,” said Rupert; “I’ve had twenty-two too many—just twenty-two.”

“’Scusin’ me sayin’ it, sah, but dat ain’t no way ter talk. A man boun’ to have some dispect for his birfday—he boun’ to! Birfdays gotter be took keer on. Whar’s a man when he runs out of ’em?”

“He’d better run out of them before he runs out of everything else,” said Rupert. “Matt, I’ve just made two dollars this month.”

He looked at the old man with a restless appeal in his big, deer-like eyes.

“I’m very sorry, Matt,” he said, “I’m terribly sorry, but you know—we can’t go on.”

Uncle Matthew looked down at the grass with a reflective air.

“Marse Rupert, did you never heah nothin’ ’bout your Uncle Marse Thomas De Willoughby?”

Rupert was silent a moment before he answered, but it was not because he required time to search his memory.

“Yes,” he said, and then was silent again. He had heard of poor Tom of the big heart from his mother, and there had been that in her soft speech of him which had made the great, tender creature very real. Even in his childhood his mother had been his passion, as he had been hers. Neither of them had had others to share their affection, and they were by nature creatures born to love. His first memory had been of looking up into the soft darkness of the tender eyes which were always brooding over him. He had been little more than a baby when he had somehow known that they were very sorrowful, and had realised that he loved them more because of their sorrow. He had been little older when he found out the reason of their sadness, and from that time he had fallen into the habit of watching them, and knowing their every look. He always remembered the look they wore when she spoke of Tom De Willoughby, and it had been a very touching one.

“Yes,” he said to Uncle Matt, “I have heard of him.”

“Dar was a time, a long way back, Marse Rupert—’fore you was borned—when I seemed to year a good deal ’bout Marse Thomas. Dat was when he went away in dat curi’s fashion. Nobody knowed whar he went, an’ nobody knowed quite why. It wus jes’ afore ye’ maw an’ paw wus married. Some said him an’ de Jedge qua’lled ’cause Marse Thomas he said he warn’t gwine ter be no medical student, an’ some said he was in love with some young lady dat wouldn’t ’cept of him.”

“Did they?” said Rupert.

“Dat dey did,” Matt said; “an’ a lot moah. But ev’rybody think it mighty strange him a-gwine, an’ no one never huntin’ him up afterwards. Seemed most like dey didn’t keer nothin’ ’bout him.”

“They didn’t, damn them!” said Rupert, with sudden passion. “And he was worth the whole lot.”

“Dat what make I say what I gwine ter,” said Matt, with some eagerness. “What I heerd about Marse Thomas make me think he must be er mighty fine gen’leman, an’ one what’d be a good fren’ to anyone. An’ dishyer ve’y mawnin’ I heerd sump’n mo’ about him.”

Rupert raised himself upon his elbow.

“About Uncle Tom!” he exclaimed. “You have heard something about Uncle Tom to-day?”

“I foun’ out whar he went, Marse Rupert,” said Matt, much roused. “I foun’ out whar he is dishyer ve’y instep. He’s in Hamlin County, keepin’ sto’ an’ post-office at Talbot’s Cross-roads; an’, frum what I heah, Marse Tom De Willoughby de mos’ pop’larist gen’leman an’ mos’ looked up ter in de county.”

“Who—who did you hear it from?” demanded Rupert.

Uncle Matt put his foot upon a rustic seat near and leaned forward, resting his elbow on his knee and making impressive gestures with his yellow-palmed old hand.

“It was dishyer claimin’ dat brung it about,” he said; “dishyer claimin’ an’ ’demnification what’s been a-settin’ pow’fle heavy on my min’ fur long ’nuff. Soon’s I yeerd tell on it, Marse Rupert, it set me ter steddyin’. I been a-watchin’ out an’ axin’ questions fur weeks, an’ when I fin’ out——”

“But what has that to do with Uncle Tom?” cried Rupert.

“A heap, Marse Rupert. Him an’ you de onliest heirs to de De Willoughby estate; an’ ef a little hoosier what’s los’ a yoke er oxen kin come down on de Guv’ment for ’demnification, why can’t de heirs of a gen’leman dat los’ what wus gwine ter be de biggest fortune in de South’n States. What’s come er dem gold mines, Marse Rupert, dat wus gwine ter make yo’ grandpa a millionaire—whar is dey? What de Yankees done with dem gol’ mines?”

“They weren’t gold mines, Uncle Matt,” said Rupert; “they were coal mines; and the Yankees didn’t carry them away. They only smashed up the machinery and ruined things generally.”

But he laid back upon the grass again with his hands clasped behind his head and his brow drawn down thoughtfully.

“Coal mines er gol’ mines,” said Uncle Matt. “Guv’ment gotter ’demnify ef things er managed right; en dat what make me think er Marse Thomas De Willoughby when dat little Stamps feller said somep’n dat soun’ like his name. ‘Now dar’s D‘Willerby,’ he ses, ‘big Tom D‘Willerby,’ en I jest jumped on him. ‘Did you say De Willoughby, sah?’ I ses, an’ from dat I foun’ out de rest.”

“I should like to see him,” said Rupert; “I always thought I should like to know where he was—if he was alive.”

“Why doan’ you go an’ see him, den?” said Matt. “Jest take yo’ foot in yo’ han’ an’ start out. Hamlin County ain’t fur, Marse Rupert, an’ de Cross-roads Pos’-office mighty easy to fin’; and when you fin’ it an’ yo’ uncle settin’ in de do’, you jest talk ter him ’bout dem gol’ mines an’ dat claimin’ business an’ ax his devise ’bout ’em. An’ ef yer doan’ fin’ yo‘se’f marchin’ on ter Wash‘n’ton city an’ a-talkin’ to de Pres’dent an’ de Senators, de whole kit an’ bilin’ of ’em, Marse Thomas ain’t de buz’ness gen‘l’man what I believe he is.”

Rupert lay still and looked straight before him, apparently at a bluebird balanced on a twig, but it was not the bird he was thinking of.

“You’se young, Marse Rupert, an’ it ’ud be purty dang’rous for a onexperienced young gen‘l’man ter lan’ down in de midst er all dem onprinciple’ Yankees with a claim to hundreds of thousan’s of dollars. Marse Thomas, he’s a settled, stiddy gen‘l’man, en, frum what I hears, I guess he’s got a mighty ’stablished-lookin’ ’pearance.”

“I should like to see him,” Rupert reflected aloud. “I should like to see him.”

The years had passed for the child Sheba so sweetly, and had been so full of simple joys and pleasures, that they seemed a panorama of lovely changing seasons, each a thing of delight. There was the spring, when she trotted by Tom’s side into the garden and he showed her the little, pale-green points of the crocuses, hyacinths, and tulips pushing their way up through the moist brown earth, and when he carried her in his big arms into the woods on the hillsides, and they saw the dogwood covered with big white flowers and the wild plum-trees snowed over with delicate blooms, and found the blue violets thick among the wet grass and leaves, and the frail white wind-flowers quivering on their stems. As they went about in this new fairyland, which came every year, and which still seemed always a surprise, it was their habit to talk to each other a great deal. The confidences they had exchanged when the child had not been able to speak, and which Tom had nevertheless understood, were enchanting things when she became older and they strayed about together or sat by the fire. Her child thoughts and fancies might have been those of some little faun or dryad She grew up among green things, with leaves waving above and around her, the sun shining upon her, and the mountains seeming to stand on guard, looking down at her from day to day, from year to year. From behind one mountain the sun rose every morning, and she always saw it; and behind another it sank at night. After the spring came the summer, when the days were golden and drowsy and hot, and there were roses and other flowers everywhere; wild roses in the woods and by the waysides, heavy-headed beauties in their own garden, and all the beds and vines a fine riot of colour. After these there were blackberries thick on their long brambles, and wild grapes in the woods, and presently a delicious snap of cold in the clear air night and morning, and the trees were dropping golden, amber, and scarlet leaves, while under the pale yellow ones which rustled beneath the chestnut-trees, there were brown, glossy nuts, which fell one by one with a delightful suddenness of sound at irregular intervals. There were big chestnut-trees in the woods near their house, and Tom and Sheba used to go before breakfast to look for the nuts which had fallen in the night. Hamlin County always rose at sunrise, or before it, and to go out in the heavenly fresh morning air and walk through the rustling, thickly fallen yellow leaves under the trees, making little darts of joy at the brown, glossy things bursting through their big burrs, was a delicious, exciting thing. Mornin’s hot breakfast held keen delights when they returned to it.

When the big wood-fires were lighted and there was snow and rain outside, and yams and chestnuts to roast in the ashes, and stories to be told and talked over in the glow of the red birch-log and snapping, flaming hickory sticks, the child used to feel as if she and Uncle Tom were even nearer together and more comfortable than at any other time.

“Uncle Tom,” she said to him, as she was standing in the circle of his arm on one such night, when she was about ten years old. “Uncle Tom, we do love each other in the winter, don’t we?”

“Yes, we do, Sheba,” answered Tom. “And we’re pretty partial to each other even in the summer.”

“We love each other at all the times,” she said. “And every morning that I get up I love you more than I did when I went to bed—every morning, Uncle Tom.”

Tom kissed her. He remembered what he had said one morning in the cabin in Blair’s Hollow ten years before.

“Perhaps, if there’s no one to come between us, she may be fond of me.”

She was fond of him. He was her very little life itself. No one had ever come between—nothing ever could.

She had by that time shot up into a tall, slender slip of a girl-child. She was passing, even with a kind of distinction, through the stage of being all long, slim legs and big eyes. The slim legs were delicately modelled and the big eyes were like pools of gold-brown water, fringed with rushes.

“I never seen a young ’un at thet thar young colty age es was es han’some es thet child o’ Big Tom’s,” Mis’ Doty often remarked.

By the frequenters of the Cross-roads Post-office she was considered, as was her protector, a county institution. When she had reached three years old, she had been measured against the wall, and each year her increase of inches was recorded amid lively demonstrations of interest. The smallness of her feet had also been registered, and the thickness and growth of her curling hair ranked as a subject of discussion only second in interest to the development of crops.

But this affection notwithstanding, a curious respect for her existed. She had played among them in the store in her little dusty pinafore; one and all of them had given her rustic offerings, bringing her special gifts of yellow popcorn ears, or abnormal yams unexpectedly developed in their own gardens, or bags of hickory nuts; but somehow they did not think or speak of her as they did of each other’s children.

Tom had built a comfortable white house, over whose verandah honeysuckles and roses soon clambered and hung. In time the ground enclosed about it had a curious likeness to the bowery unrestraint of the garden he had played in during his childhood. It was a pleasure to him to lay it out on the old plan and to plant japonicas, flowering almonds, and syringa bushes, as they had grown in the days when he had played under them as a child, or lounged on the grass near them as a boy. He and Sheba planted everything themselves—or, rather, Sheba walked about with him or stood by his side and talked while he worked. In time she knew almost as well as he did the far-away garden he took as his model. She learned to know the place by heart.

“Were you a little boy then, Uncle Tom?” she would say, “when there was a mock-orange and a crape myrtle next to the big yellow rose-bush?”

There were even times when he found her memory was better than his own, and she could correct him.

“Ah! no, Uncle Tom,” she would say; “the pansies were not in the little heart-shaped bed; they were all round the one with the pink harp-flower in the middle.”

When she was six years old he sent for some books and began seriously to work with a view to refreshing his memory on subjects almost forgotten.

“I’m preparing myself for a nursery governess, Sheba,” he said. “What we want is a nursery governess, and I don’t know where to find one. I shouldn’t know how to manage her if I did find her, so I’ve got to post up for the position myself.”

The child was so happy with him in all circumstances, that it was easy to teach her anything. She had learned to read and write before she discovered that the process she went through to acquire these accomplishments was not an agreeable pastime specially invented by Tom for her amusement. At eleven years old she had become so interested in her work that she was quite an excited little student. By the time she was twelve Tom began to shake his head at her.

“If you go on like this,” he said, “I sha‘n’t be able to keep up with you, and what I’ve got to do is to keep ahead. If I can’t, I shall have to send you to the Academy at Ralston; and how should we stand that?”

She came and sat upon his big knee—a slim little thing, as light as a bird.

“We couldn’t stand it, Uncle Tom,” she said. “We have to be together. We always have been, haven’t we?” And she rubbed her ruffled head against his huge breast.

“Yes, we always have been,” answered Tom; “and it would go pretty hard with us to make a change, Sheba.”

She was not sent to Ralston. The war broke out and altered the aspect of things even at the Cross-roads. The bank in which Tom’s modest savings were deposited was swept away by misfortune; the primitive resources of Hamlin County were depleted, as the resources of all the land were. But for the existence of the white, vine-embowered house and the garden full of scents and bloom, Tom’s position at the close of the rebellion was far less fortunate than it had been at the time the mystery of Blair’s Hollow had occurred. In those old, happy-go-lucky days the three rooms behind the store and the three meals Mornin cooked for him had been quite sufficient for free and easy peace. He had been able to ensure himself these primitive comforts with so little expenditure that money had scarcely seemed an object. He had taken eggs in exchange for sugar, bacon in exchange for tea, and butter in exchange for everything. Now he had no means of resource but the store, and the people were poorer than they had been. Farms had gone to temporary ruin through unavoidable neglect during the absence of their masters. More than one honest fellow had marched away and never returned, and their widows were left to struggle with the land and their children. The Cross-roads store, which had thriven so wonderfully for a year or two before the breaking out of the war, began to wear a less cheerful aspect. As far as he himself was concerned, Tom knew that life was a simple enough thing, but by his side there was growing up a young goddess. She was not aware that she was a young goddess. There was no one in the vicinity of the Cross-roads who could have informed her that she presented somewhat of that aspect, and that she was youth and happiness and Nature’s self at once.

Tom continually indulged in deep reflection on his charge after she was twelve years old. She shot up into the tall suppleness of a lovely young birch, and she was a sweetly glowing thing. A baby had been a different matter; the baby had not been so difficult to manage; but when he found himself day by day confronting the sweetness of child-womanhood in the eyes that were gold-brown pools, and the softening grace of the fair young body, he began to be conscious of something like alarm. He was not at all sure what he ought to do at this crisis, and whether life confining its experiences entirely to Talbot’s Cross-roads was all that was required.

“I don’t know whether it’s right, by thunder,” he said. “I don’t know whether it’s right; and that’s what a man who’s taken the place of a young mother ought to know.”

There came a Sunday when one of the occasional “preachings” was to be held at the log-cabin church a few miles distant, and they were going together, as they always did.

It was a heavenly, warm spring morning, and Sheba, having made herself ready, wandered into the garden to wait among the flowers. The rapturous first scents of the year were there, drawn by the sun and blown by vagrant puffs of wind from hyacinths and jonquils, white narcissus and blue violets. Sheba walked among the beds, every few minutes kneeling down upon the grass to bury her face in pink and yellow and white clusters, inhaling the breath of flowers and the pungent freshness of the sweet brown earth at the same time. She had lived among leaves and growing things until she felt herself in some unexplainable way a part of the world they belonged to. The world beyond the mountains she knew nothing of; but this world, which was the brown earth springing forth into green blades and leaves and little streaked buds, warming into bloom and sun-drenched fragrance, setting the birds singing and nest-building, giving fruits and grain, and yellow and scarlet leaves, and folding itself later in snow and winter sleep—this world she knew as well as she knew herself. The birds were singing and nest-building this morning, and, as she hung over a bed of purple and white hyacinths, kneeling on the grass and getting as close to them as she could, their perfume mounted to her brain and she began to kiss them.

“I love you,” she said, dwelling on their sweet coolness with her lips; “I love and love you!” And suddenly she made a little swoop and kissed the brown earth itself. “And, oh! I love you, too!” she said. “I love you, too!”

She looked like young spring’s self when she stood up as Tom came towards her. Her smile was so radiant a thing that he felt his heart quake with no other reason than this sight of her happy youth.

“What are you thinking of, Sheba?” he asked.

“I am thinking,” she said, as she glanced all about her, the smile growing more entrancing, “I am thinking how happy I am, and how happy the world is, and how I love you, and,” with a pretty laugh, “the flowers, and the sun, and the earth—and everything in the world!”

“Yes,” said Tom, looking at her tenderly. “It’s the spring, Sheba.”

She caught his arm and clung to it, laughing again.

“Yes,” she answered; “and when it isn’t the spring, it is the summer; and when it isn’t the summer, it is the autumn; and when it isn’t the autumn, it is the winter; and we sit by the fire and know the spring is making its way back every day. Everything is beautiful—everything is happy, Uncle Tom.”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Tom.

“Why do you say that?” Sheba asked. “Why do you look so—so puzzled, Uncle Tom?”

“Well,” said Tom, holding her out at arm’s length before him, “the truth is, I’ve suddenly realised something. I’d like to know what I’m to do with this!”

“This?” laughed Sheba. “Am I ‘this’? You look at me as if I was ‘this’.”

“You are,” Tom answered, ruefully. “Here you suddenly change to a young woman on a man’s hands. Now, what am I to do with a grown-up young woman? I’m used to babies, and teething, and swallowing kangaroos out of Noah’s arks—and I know something of measles and letting tucks out of frocks; but when it comes to a beautiful young woman, there you have me!”

He shook his head as he ended, and, though his face wore the affectionate, humorous smile which had never failed her, there was a new element in its kindness which, it must be confessed, bordered on bewilderment.

“A beautiful, grown-up young woman,” he said, glancing reflectively over her soft, swaying slimness, her white frock with its purple ribbon and golden jonquils, and up to her tender cheek.

Sheba blushed with sweet delight.

“Am I beautiful, Uncle Tom?” she inquired, with a lovely anxiousness in her eyes.

“Yes, you are,” admitted Tom; “and it isn’t a drawback to you, Sheba, but it’s likely to make trouble for me.”

“But why?” she said.

“In novels, and poetry, and sometimes in real life, beautiful young women are fallen in love with, and then trouble is liable to begin,” explained Tom with amiable gravity.

“There is no one to fall in love with me at the Cross-roads,” said Sheba, sweetly. “I wish there was.”

“Good Lord,” exclaimed Tom, devoutly. “Come along to church, Sheba, and let’s go in for fasting and prayer.”

He took her to the “preaching” in the log cabin and noticed the effect of her entry on the congregation as they went in. There were a number of more or less awkward and raw-boned young male creatures whose lives were spent chiefly in cornfields and potato patches. They were uncomely hewers of wood and drawers of water, but they turned their heads to look at her, and their eyes followed her as she went to her seat. When she had sat down, those who could catch glimpses of her involuntarily craned their necks and sat in discomfort until the sermon was over. Tom recognised this fact, and in secret reflected upon it in all its bearings.

“Yes,” he found himself saying, mentally; “I’d like to know how I’m going to do my duty by this. I don’t believe there’s a derned thing about it in ‘Advice to Young Mothers.’”

The day wore on to its lovely end, and lost itself in one of the sunsets which seem to flood the sky with a tide of ripples of melted gold, here and there tipped with flame. When this was over, a clear, fair moon hung lighted in the heavens, and, flooding with silver what had been flooded with gold, changed the flame-tips to pearl.

Sheba strayed in the garden among the flowers. Tom, sitting under the vines of the porch, watched her white figure straying in and out among the shrubbery. At last he saw her standing on the grass in the full radiance of the moonlight, her hands hanging clasped behind her and her face turned upward to the sky. As she had wandered about, she had done a fanciful thing. She had made a wreath of white narcissus and laid it on her hair, and she had twisted together a sort of long garland of the same blossoms and cast it loosely round her waist.

“She never did that before,” Tom said, as he watched her. “Good Lord! what a picture she is, standing there with her face lifted. I wonder what she’s thinking of.”

“Uncle Tom,” she said, when she sauntered back to him, “does the moonlight make you feel sad without being unhappy at all? That is what it does to me.”

“It’s the spring, Sheba,” he said, as he had said it in the morning; “it’s the spring.”

She saw that he was looking at her flower garlands, and she broke into a shy little laugh.

“You see what you have done to me, Uncle Tom,” she said; “now you have told me I am a beautiful young woman, I shall always be doing things to—to make myself look prettier.”

She came on to the verandah to him, and he held out his hand to her.

“That’s the spring, too, Sheba,” he said.

She yielded as happily and naturally to the enfolding of his big arm in these days as she had done when she was a baby. No one but themselves knew what they were to each other.

They had always talked things over together—their affection, their pleasures, their simple anxieties and responsibilities. They had discussed her playthings in the first years of their friendship and her lessons when she had been a little girl. To-night the subject which began to occupy them had some seriousness of aspect. The changes time and the tide of war had made were bringing Tom face to face with a difficulty his hopeful, easy-going nature had never contemplated with any realising sense—the want of money, even the moderate amount the requirements of their simple lives made necessary.

“It’s the taxes that a man can’t stand up against,” Tom said. “You may cut off all you like, and wear your old clothes, but there’s a liveliness about taxes that takes the sand out of you. Talk about the green bay-tree flourishing and increasing, all a tax wants is to be let alone a few years. It’ll come to its full growth without any sunning or watering. Mine have had to be left alone for a while, and—well, here we are—another year, and——”

“Will the house be taken?” Sheba asked.

“If I can’t pay up, it’ll all go—house and store and all,” Tom answered. “Then we shall have to go too.”

He turned and looked ruefully at the face beneath the wreath of white narcissus.

“I wish it hadn’t come on us just now,” he said. “There’s no particular season that trouble adds a charm to; but it seems to me that it’s not entitled to the spring.”

When she went upstairs she did not go to bed. The moonlight lured her out into the night again. Outside her window there was a little balcony. It was only of painted wood, as the rest of the house was, but a multiflora rose had climbed over it and hung it with a wonderful drapery, and, as she stood upon it, she unconsciously made herself part of a picture almost strange in its dramatic quality.

She looked out over the sleeping land to the mountains standing guard.

“Where should we go?” she said. “The world is on the other side.”

She was not in the mood to observe sound, or she would have heard the clear stroke of a horse’s hoofs on the road. She did not even hear the opening of the garden gate. She was lost in the silver beauty of the night, and a vague dreaming which had fallen upon her. On the other side of the purple of the mountains was the world. It had always been there and she had always been here. Presently she found herself sighing aloud, though she could not have told why.

“Ah!” she said as softly as young Juliet. “Ah, me!”

As she could not have told why she sighed, so there was no explanation of the fact that, having done so, she looked downward to the garden path, as if something had drawn her eyes there. It is possible that some attraction had so drawn them, for she found herself looking into a young, upturned face—the dark, rather beautiful face of a youth who stood and looked upward as if he had stopped involuntarily at sight of her.

She drew back with a little start and then bent her Narcissus-crowned head forward.

“Who—who is it?” she exclaimed.

He started himself at the sound of her voice. She had indeed looked scarcely a real creature a few moments ago. He took off his hat and answered:

“I am Rupert De Willoughby,” he said. “I beg pardon for disturbing you. It startled me to see you standing there. I came to see Mr. Thomas De Willoughby.”

It was a singular situation. Perhaps the moonlight had something to do with it; perhaps the spring. They stood and looked at each other quite simply, as if they did not know that they were strangers. A young dryad and faun meeting on a hilltop or in a forest’s depths by moonlight might have looked at each other with just such clear, unstartled eyes, and with just such pleasure in each other’s beauty. For, of a truth, each one was thinking the same thing, innocently and with a sudden gladness.

As he had come up the garden-path, Rupert had seen a vision and had stopped unconsciously that instant. And Sheba, looking down, had seen a vision too—a beautiful face as young as her own, and with eyes that glowed.

“You don’t know what you looked like standing there,” said Rupert, as simply as the young faun might have spoken. “It was as if you were a spirit. The flowers in your hair looked like great white stars.”

“Did they?” she said, and stood and softly gazed at him.

How the boy looked up at her young loveliness! He had never so looked at any woman before. And then a thought detached itself from the mists of memory and he seemed to remember.

“Are you Sheba?” he asked.

“Yes, I am Sheba,” she answered, rather slowly. “And I remember you, too. You are the boy.”

He drew nearer to the balcony, laying his hand upon the multiflora rose creeper.

“Yes, yes,” he said, almost tremulous with eagerness. “You bring it all back. You were a little child, and I——”

“You rode away,” she said, “over the hill.”

“Will you come down to me?” he said.

“Yes,” she answered, and that moment disappeared.

He stood in the moonlight, his head bared, his straw hat in his hand. He felt as if he was in a dream. His face had lost its gloom and yearning, and his eyes looked like his mother’s.

When he heard a light foot nearing him, he went forward, and they met with strange young smiles and took each other’s hands. Nearer than the balcony, she was even a sweeter thing, and the scent of her white flowers floated about her.

As they stood so, smiling, Tom came and joined them. Sheba had called him as she passed his door.

Rupert turned round and spoke, vaguely conscious, as he did so, that his words sounded somewhat like words uttered in a dream and were not such as he had planned.

“Uncle Tom,” he said, “I—Delia Vanuxem was my mother.”