Eve picked up her comb and turned back towards the door.
Cicely danced on ahead, humming her song; they passed through the labyrinth of dark little rooms, the glimmering dress acting as guide through the dimness. Cicely went as far as the second hall; here she stopped.
“It’s the wind, you know,” she said, in her usual voice; “when it blows like this, I always have to do something; sometimes I call out and shout. But I don’t care for it, really; I don’t care for anything!” Her face, as she spoke, looked set and melancholy. She opened a door and disappeared.
The next day there was nothing in her expression to indicate that there had been another dance at Romney the night before, besides the one at the negro quarters.
Eve was puzzled. She had thought her so unimaginative and quiet; “a passionless, practical little creature, cool and unimpulsive, whose miniature beauty led poor Jack astray, and made him believe that she had a soul!” This had been her estimate. She was alone with the baby; she took him to the window and looked at him earnestly. The little man smiled back at her, playing with the crape of her dress. No, there was nothing of Cicely here; the blue eyes, golden hair, and frank smile—all were his father over again.
“We’ll make that Mr. Morrison come back, baby; and then you and I will go away together,” she whispered, stroking his curls.
“Meh Kiss’m,” said Jack. It was as near as he could come to “Merry Christmas.”
“Before another Christmas I’ll get you away from her forever!” murmured the aunt, passionately.
V.
“OUT rowing? If you are doing it to entertain me—” said Eve.
“I should never think of that; there’s only one thing here that entertains you, and that’s baby,” Cicely answered. She spoke without insistence; her eyes had their absent-minded expression.
“Cicely, give him to me,” Eve began. She must put her wish into words some time. “If I could only make you feel how much I long for it! I will devote my life to him; and it will be a pleasure to me, a charity, because I am so alone in the world. You are not alone; you have other ties. Listen, Cicely, I will make any arrangement you like; you shall always have the first authority, but let me have him to live with me; let me take him away when I go. I will even acknowledge everything you have said: my brother was much older than you were; it’s natural that those months with him should seem to you now but an episode—something that happened at the beginning of your life, but which need not go on to its close.”
“I was young,” said Cicely, musingly.
“Young to marry—yes.”
“No; I mean young to have everything ended.”
“But that is what I am telling you, it must not be ended; Mr. Morrison must come back to you.”
“He may,” answered Cicely, looking at her companion for a moment with almost a solemn expression.
“Then give baby to me now, and let me go away—before he comes.”
Cicely glanced off over the water; they were standing on the low bank above the Sound. “He could not go north now, in the middle of the winter,” she answered, after a moment.
“In the early spring, then?”
“I don’t know; perhaps.”
Eve’s heart gave a bound. She was going to gain her point.
Having been brought up by a man, she had learned to do without the explanations, the details, which are dear to most feminine minds; so all she said was, “That’s agreed, then.” She was so happy that a bright flush rose in her cheeks, and her smile, as she spoke these last few words, was very sweet; those lips, which Miss Sabrina had thought so sullen, had other expressions.
Cicely looked at her. “You may marry too.”
Eve laughed. “There is no danger. To show you, to make you feel as secure as I do, I will tell you that there have been one or two—friends of Jack’s over there. Apparently I am not made of inflammable material.”
“When you are sullen—perhaps not. But when you are as you are now?”
“I shall always be sullen to that sort of thing. But we needn’t be troubled; there won’t be an army! To begin with, I am twenty-eight; and to end with, every one will know that I have willed my property to baby; and that makes an immense difference.”
“How does it make a difference?”
“In opportunities for marrying, if not also—as I really believe—for falling in love.”
“I don’t see what difference it makes.”
“True, you do not,” Eve replied; “you are the most extraordinary people in the world, you Southerners; I have been here nearly a month, and I am still constantly struck by it—you never think of money at all. And the strangest point is, that although you never think of it, you don’t in the least know how to get on without it; you cannot improve anything, you can only endure.”
“If you will tell Dilsey to get baby ready, I will see to the boat,” answered Cicely. She was never interested in general questions.
Presently they were afloat. They were in a large row-boat, with Pomp, Plato, Uncle Abram, and a field hand at the oars; Cicely steered; Eve and little Jack were the passengers. The home-island was four miles long, washed by the ocean on one side, the Sound on the other; on the north, Singleton Island lay very near; but on the south there was a broad opening, the next island being six miles distant. Here stood Jupiter Light; this channel was a sea-entrance not only to the line of Sounds, but also to towns far inland, for here opened on the west a great river-mouth, through which flowed to the sea a broad, slow stream coming from the cotton country. They were all good sailors, as they had need to be for such excursions, the Sounds being often rough. The bright winter air, too, was sharp; but Eve was strong, and did not mind it, and the ladies of Romney, like true Southerners, never believed that it was really cold, cold as it is at the North. The voyages in the row-boat had been many; they had helped to fill the days, and the sisters-in-law had had not much else with which to fill them; they had remained as widely apart as in the beginning, Eve absorbed in her own plans, Cicely in her own indifference. Little Jack was always of the party, as his presence made dialogue easy. They had floated many times through the salt marshes between the rattling reeds, they had landed upon other islands, whose fields, like those of Romney, had once been fertile, but which now showed submerged expanses behind the broken dikes, with here and there an abandoned rice-mill. Sometimes they went inland up the river, rowing slowly against the current; sometimes, when it was calm, they went out to sea. To-day they crossed to the other side of the Sound.
“What a long house Romney is!” said Eve, looking back. She did not add, “And if you drop anything on the floor at one end it shakes the other.”
“Yes, it’s large,” Cicely answered. She perceived no fault in it.
“And the name; you know there’s a Romney in Kent?”
“Is there?”
“And your post-office, too; when I think of your Warwick, with its one wooden house, those spectral white sand-hills, the wind, and the tall light-house, and then when I recall the English Warwick, with its small, closely built streets, and the great castle looking down into the river Avon, I wonder if the first-comers here didn’t feel lost sometimes. All the rivers in central England, put together, would be drowned out of sight in that great yellow stream of yours over there.”
But Cicely’s imagination took no flight towards the first-comers, nor towards the English rivers; and, in another moment, Eve’s had come hastily homeward, for little Jack coughed. “He is taking cold!” she exclaimed. “Let us go back.”
“It’s a splendid day; he will take no cold,” Cicely answered. “But we will go back if you wish.” She watched Eve fold a shawl round the little boy. “You ought to have a child of your own, Eve,” she said, with her odd little laugh.
“And you ought never to have had one,” Eve responded.
As they drew near the landing, they perceived Miss Sabrina on the bank. “She has on her bonnet! Where can she be going?” said Cicely. “Oh, I know; she will ask you to row to Singleton Island, to return Mrs. Singleton’s call.”
“But Jack looks so pale—”
“You’re too funny, Eve! How do you suppose we have taken care of him all this time—before you came?” Eve’s tone was often abrupt, but Cicely’s was never that; the worst you could say of it was that its sweetness was sometimes mocking.
When they reached the landing, Miss Sabrina proposed her visit; “that is, if you care to go, my dear. Dilsey told me that she saw you coming back, so I put on my bonnet on the chance.”
“Eve is going,” remarked Cicely, stepping from the boat; “she wants to see Rupert, he is such a sweet little boy.”
Dilsey took Jack, and presently Miss Sabrina and her guest were floating northward. Eve longed to put her triumph into words: “The baby is mine! In the spring I am to have him.” But she refrained. “When does your spring begin?” she asked. “In February?”
“In March, rather,” answered Miss Sabrina. “Before that it is dangerous to make changes; I myself have never been one to put on thin dresses with the pinguiculas.”
“What are pinguiculas?—Birds?”
“They are flowers,” responded Miss Sabrina, mildly.
“It will be six weeks, then; to-day is the fifteenth.”
“Six weeks to what?”
“To March; to spring.”
“I don’t know that it begins on the very first day,” remarked Miss Sabrina.
“Mine shall!” thought Eve.
Romney was near the northern end of the home-island; the voyage, therefore, was a short one. The chimneys of Singleton House came into view; but the boat passed on, still going northward. “Isn’t that the house?” Eve asked.
“Yes, but the landing is farther on; we always go to the landing, and then walk back through the avenue.”
But when the facade appeared at the end of the neglected road—a walk of fifteen minutes—there seemed to Eve hardly occasion for so much ceremony; the old mansion was in a worse condition than Romney; it sidled and leaned, and one of its wings was a roofless ruin, with the planking of the floor half tilted up, half fallen into the cellar. Miss Sabrina betrayed no perception of the effect of this upon a stranger; she crossed the veranda with her lady-like step, and said to a solemn little negro boy who was standing in the doorway: “Is Mrs. Singleton at home this evening, Boliver? Can she see us?—Miss Bruce and Miss Abercrombie.”
An old negro woman came round the corner of the house, and, cuffing the boy for standing there, ushered the visitors into a room on the right of the broad hall. The afternoon had grown colder, but the doors and windows all stood open; a negro girl, who bore a strong resemblance to Powlyne, entered, and chased out a chicken who was prowling about over the matted floor; then she knelt down, with her long thin black legs stretched out behind, and tried to light a fire on the hearth. But the wind was evidently in the wrong direction for the requirements of that chimney; white smoke puffed into the room in clouds.
“Let us go out on the veranda,” suggested Eve, half choked.
“Oh, but surely— When they have ushered us in here?” responded Miss Sabrina, remonstratingly, though she too was nearly strangled. “It will blow away in a few minutes, I assure you.”
Much of it still remained when Mrs. Singleton entered. She paid no more attention to it than Miss Sabrina had done; she welcomed her guests warmly, kissing Eve on both cheeks, although she had never seen her before. “I have been so much interested in hearing that you are from England, Miss Bruce,” she said, taking a seat beside her. “We always think of England as our old home; I reckon you will see much down here to remind you of it.”
Eve looked about her—at the puffing smoke, at the wandering chicken, who still peered through one of the windows. “I am not English,” she said.
“But you have lived there so long; ever since you were a child; surely it is the same thing,” interposed Miss Sabrina. A faint color rose in her cheeks for a moment. Eve perceived that she preferred to present an English rather than a Northern guest.
“We are all English, if you come to that,” said Mrs. Singleton, confidently. She was small, white-haired, with a sweet face, and a sweet voice that drawled a little.
“Eve is much interested in our nig-roes,” pursued Miss Sabrina; “you know to her they are a novelty.”
“Ah dear, yes, our poor, poor people! When I think of them, Miss Bruce, scattered and astray, with no one to advise them, it makes my heart bleed. For they must be suffering in so many ways; take the one instance of the poor women in their confinements; we used to go to them, and be with them to cheer their time of trial. But now, separated from us, from our care and oversight, what can they do? If the people who have been so rash in freeing them had only thought of even that one thing! But I suppose they did not think of it, and naturally, because the abolitionist societies, we are told, were composed principally of old maids.”
Eve laughed. “Why can’t they have nurses, as other people do?”
“You don’t mean regular monthly nurses, of course?”
“Why not?—if they can afford to pay for them. They might club together to supply them.”
“Oh, I don’t think that would be at all appropriate, really. And Eve does not mean it, I assure you,” said Miss Sabrina, coming to the rescue; “her views are perfectly reasonable, dear Mrs. Singleton; you would be surprised.”
“You would indeed!” Eve thought.
But they talked no more of the nig-roes.
“How is Miss Hillsborough?” Miss Sabrina asked.
“Right well, I am glad to say. My dear Aunt Peggy, Miss Bruce; and what she is to me I can hardly tell you! You know I am something of a talker”—here Mrs. Singleton laughed softly. “And we are so much alone here now, that, were it not for Aunt Peggy, I should fairly have to talk to the chickens!” (One at least would be ready, Eve thought.) “Don’t you know that there are ever so many little things each day that we want to say to somebody?” Mrs. Singleton went on. “Thinking them is not enough. And these dear people, like Aunt Peggy, who sit still and listen;—it isn’t what they answer that’s of consequence; in fact they seldom say much; it’s just the chance they give us of putting our own thought into words and seeing how it looks. It does make such a difference.”
“You are fortunate,” Eve answered. “And then you have your little boy, too; Cicely has told me about him—Rupert; she says he is a dear little fellow.”
“Dear heart!” exclaimed Miss Sabrina, distressed. “Cicely is sometimes—yes—”
But Mrs. Singleton laughed merrily. “I will show him to you presently,” she said.
“Mr. Singleton is so extraordinarily agreeable!” said Miss Sabrina, with unwonted animation.
“Oh yes, he is wonderful; and he is a statesman too, a second Patrick Henry. But then as regards the little things of each day, you know, we don’t go to our husbands with those.”
“What do you do, then?—I mean with the husbands,” Eve asked.
“I think we admire them,” answered Mrs. Singleton, simply.
Lucasta, the negro girl, now appeared with a tray. “Pray take some Madeira,” said their hostess, filling the tiny glasses. “And plum-cake.”
Eve declined. But Miss Sabrina accepted both refreshments, and Mrs. Singleton bore her company. The wine was unspeakably bad, it would have been difficult to say what had entered into its composition; but Madeira had formed part of the old-time hospitality of the house, and something that was sold under that name (at a small country store on the mainland opposite) was still kept in the cut-glass decanter, to be served upon occasion.
Presently a very tall, very portly, and very handsome old man (he well merited three verys) came in, leaning on a cane. “Miss Bruce—little Rupert; our dear little boy,” said Mrs. Singleton, introducing him. She had intended to laugh, but she forgot it; she gazed at him admiringly.
The master of the house put aside his cane, and looked about for a chair. As he stood there, helpless for an instant, he seemed gigantic.
Eve laughed.
Miss Sabrina murmured, “Pleasantry, dear Mr. Singleton;—our foolish pleasantry.”
After the old gentleman had found his chair and seated himself, and had drawn a breath or two, he gave a broad slow smile. “Nanny, are you in the habit of introducing me to your young lady friends as your dear little Rupert?—your little Rupe?”
“Rupe? Never!” answered Mrs. Singleton, indignantly.
“Only our foolish pleasantry,” sighed Miss Sabrina, apologetically.
“It was Cicely,” Eve explained.
“If it was Cicely, it was perfect,” the lame colossus answered, gallantly. “Cicely is heavenly. Upon my word, she is the most engaging young person I have ever seen in my life.”
He then ate some plum-cake, and paid Eve compliments even more handsome than these.
After a while he imparted the news; he had been down to the landing to meet the afternoon steamer, which brought tidings from the outside world. “Melton is dead,” he said. “You know whom I mean? Melton, the great stockbroker; one of the richest men living, I suppose.”
“Oh! where is his soul now?” said Mrs. Singleton. Her emotion was real, her sweet face grew pallid.
“Why, I have never heard that he was a bad man, especially,” remarked Eve, surprised.
“He was sure to be—making all that money; it could not be otherwise. Oh, what is his agony at this very moment!”
But Rupert did not sympathize with this mournfulness; when three ladies were present, conversation should be light, poetical. “Miss Bruce,” he said, turning towards Eve—he was so broad that that in itself made a landscape—“have you ever noticed the appropriateness of ‘County Guy’ to this neighborhood of ours?”
“No,” Eve answered. But the words brought her father to her mind with a rush: how often, when she was a child, had he beguiled a dull walk with a chant, half song, half declamation:
“Oh, County Guy, the hour is nigh,
The sun has left the lea.”
She looked at her host, but she did not hear him; a mist gathered in her eyes.
“‘Oh, County Guy, the hour is nigh,’”
began the colossus, placing his plum-cake on his knee provisionally.
“‘The sun has left the lea;
The orange flower perfumes the bower,
The breeze is on the sea.
The lark his lay who trilled all day
Sits hushed his partner nigh.
Breeze, bird, and flower confess the hour;
But where is County Guy? ’
“The orange flower perfumes the bower; here we have the orange flower and the lea, the bower and the sea; and it’s very rarely that you find all four together. ‘The lark his lay who trilled all day’—what music it is! There’s no one like Scott.”
His lameness prevented him from accompanying his guests on their walk back to the boat; he stood in the doorway leaning on his cane and waving a courtly farewell, while the chicken, with slowly considering steps, crossed the veranda and entered the drawing-room again.
“Miss Sabrina, please tell me what you know of Ferdinand Morrison,” Eve began, as soon as a turn in the road hid the old house from their view.
Miss Sabrina had expected to talk about the Singletons. “Oh, Mr. Morrison? we did not see him ourselves, you know.”
“But you must have heard.”
“Certainly, we heard. The Singletons are delightful people, are they not? So cultivated! Their house has always been one of the most agreeable on the Sound.”
“I dare say. But about Ferdinand Morrison?” Eve went on. For it was not often that she had so good an opportunity; at Romney, if there was no one else present, there were always the servants, who came in and out like members of the family. “Cicely met him first in Savannah, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” answered Miss Sabrina (but giving up the Singletons with regret); “she went to pay a visit to our cousin Emmeline; and there she met him. From the very beginning he appeared to be much in love with her, Cousin Emmeline wrote. And Cicely too—so we heard—appeared to care for him from the first day. At least Cousin Emmeline received that impression; Cicely, of course, did not take her into her confidence.”
“Why of course?”
“At that early stage? But don’t you think that those first sweet uncertainties are always private? Mr. Morrison used to come every day, and take her out for a drive; I have been in Savannah myself, and I have often thought that probably they went to Bonaventure—so delightful! At last, one evening, Cicely told Cousin Emmeline that she was engaged. And the next day she wrote to us. She did not come home; they were married there at Emmeline’s.”
“And none of you went to the wedding?”
“There were only father and I to go; we have not always been able to do as we wished,” replied Miss Sabrina, gently.
“Mr. Morrison had money, I suppose?”
“I think not; we have never been told so.”
“Didn’t you ask?”
“That was for Cicely, wasn’t it? I dare say she knows. We could only hope, father and I, that she would be happy; but I fear that she has not been, ah no.” And Miss Sabrina sighed.
“But we must not give it up so, she is still so young. Why don’t you write to Mr. Morrison yourself, and tell him, command him, to come back?” suggested Eve, boldly.
“But—but I don’t know where he is,” answered Miss Sabrina, bewildered by this sudden attack.
“You said South America.”
“But I couldn’t write, ‘Ferdinand Morrison, Esquire, South America.’”
“Some one must know. His relatives.”
“Yes, there is his brother, and a most devoted brother, we are told,” responded Miss Sabrina, speaking more fluently now that she had launched upon family affection. “Yes, indeed—from all we have heard of Paul Tennant, we are inclined to think him a most excellent young man. He may not have Ferdinand’s beauty (we are told that Ferdinand is remarkably handsome); and it is probable, too, that he has not Ferdinand’s cultivation, for he is a business man, and has always lived at the North.—I beg your pardon, my dear, I am sure,” said the Southern lady, interrupting herself in confusion.
“It doesn’t matter; the North won’t die of it. If you know where this brother is— But why has he a different name?”
“The mother, Mrs. Tennant, who was a widow with this one boy, Paul, married one of the Maryland Morrisons—I reckon you know the family. Ferdinand is the child of this second marriage. His father and mother are dead; his only near relative is this half-brother, Paul.”
“Write to Paul, then, and find out where Ferdinand is.”
“This is a plot, isn’t it?” answered Miss Sabrina, smiling. “But I like it; it’s so sweet of you to plan for our poor Cicely’s happiness.”
“You needn’t thank me! Then you will write?”
“But I don’t know where Mr. Tennant is either.—I dare say Cicely knows.”
“But if you ask her, she will suspect something. And if I ask her, it will be worse still! Doesn’t anybody in the world know where this Paul Tennant is?” said Eve, irritably.
“I think we heard that it was some place where it is very cold—I remember that. It might have been Canada,” suggested Sabrina, reflectively.
“Canada and South America—what a family!” said Eve, in despair.
The wind had risen, the homeward voyage was rough. They reached Romney to find little Jack ill; before morning he was struggling with an attack of croup.
VI.
“CICELY, what did you say to those people, that they stared at us so when they passed?”
“Oh, they asked me if you were the man who went round with the panorama—to explain it, you know. So I told them that you were the celebrated Jessamine family—you and Miss Leontine; and that you were going to give a concert in Gary Hundred to-night; I advised them to go.”
“Bless my soul!—the celebrated Jessamine family? What possessed you?”
“Well, they saw the wagon, and they thought it looked like a panorama. They seemed to want something, so I told them that.”
Eve broke into a laugh.
But the judge put on his spectacles, and walked round the wagon with indignant step. “It is an infernal color,” he declared, angrily.
“Our good Dickson had that paint on hand—he told me about it,” explained Miss Leontine. “It was left over”—here she paused. “I don’t know what you will think, but I believe it really was left over after a circus—or was it a menagerie? At any rate, the last thing that was exhibited here before the war.”
The vehicle in question was a long-bodied, two seated wagon, with a square box behind, which opened at the back like the box of a carrier’s cart; its hue was the liveliest pea green.
“Dickson had no business to give it to us; it was a damned impertinence!” said the judge, with a snort.
“Don’t spoil your voice, when you’ve got to sing to-night, grandpa,” remarked Cicely. “And you will have to lead out Miss Leontine—who will sing ‘Waiting.’”
The judge glanced at Miss Leontine. He could not repress a grin.
But tall Miss Leontine remained amiable, she had never heard of “Waiting.” In any case she seldom penetrated jokes; they seemed to her insufficiently explained; often, indeed, abstruse. She was fifty-two, and very maidenly; her bearing, her voice, her expression, were all timidly virginal, as were also the tints of her attire, pale blues and lavenders, and faint green. Her face bore a strong resemblance to the face of a camel; give a camel a pink-and-white complexion, blue eyes, and light-brown hair coming down in flat bands on each side of its long face, and you have Miss Leontine. She was extraordinarily tall—she attained a stature of nearly six feet. Her step, as if conscious of this, was apologetic; her long narrow back leaned forward as though she were trying to reduce her height in front as she came towards one. She wore no crinoline; her head was decked with a large gypsy hat, from which floated a blue tissue veil.
The little party of four—Eve, Cicely, the judge, and Miss Leontine—with Master Jack, had driven from Gary Hundred to Bellington; their hostess, Cousin Sarah Cray, had an old horse, and this wagon had been borrowed from Dickson, the village grainer (who had so mistakenly saved the circus paint); it would be a pleasant excursion in itself, and it would be good for Jack—which last was the principal point with them all.
For the much longer excursion from Abercrombie Island to this inland South Carolina village had been taken on Jack’s account; the attack of croup had left him with a harassing cough, a baby’s little cough, which is so distressing to the ears of those who love him. Eve had walked about, day and night, carrying him in her arms, his languid head on her shoulder; she could not bear to see how large his eyes looked in his little white face; she did not sleep; she could scarcely speak.
“We might go to Cousin Sarah Cray’s for a while, away from the coast,” Cicely suggested. She was always present when Eve walked restlessly to and fro; but she did not interfere, she let Eve have the child.
Eve had no idea who or where was Cousin Sarah Cray, but she agreed to anything that would take Jack away from the coast. It was very cold now at Romney; the Sound was dark and rough all the time, the sea boomed, the winds were bitter. They had therefore journeyed inland, Jack and Eve, Cicely and her grandfather, leaving Miss Sabrina to guard the island-home alone.
When they reached Gary Hundred and the softer air, Jack began to revive; Eve too revived, she came back to daily life again. One of the first things she said was: “I ought not to be staying here, Cicely; you must let me go to the hotel; your cousin is not my cousin.”
“She’s Jack’s.”
“Do you mean by that that Jack must stay, and if he does, I shall? But it isn’t decent; here we have all descended upon her at a moment’s notice, and filled up her house, and tramped to and fro. She doesn’t appear to be rich.”
“We are all as poor as crows, but we always go and stay with each other just the same. As for Cousin Sarah Cray, she loves it. Of course we take her as we find her.”
“We do indeed!” was Eve’s thought. “It is all very well for you,” she went on, aloud. “But I am a stranger.”
“Cousin Sarah Cray doesn’t think so; she thinks you very near—a sister of her cousin.”
“If you count in that way, what families you must have! But why shouldn’t we all go to the hotel, and take her with us? There’s an idea.”
“For one reason, there’s no hotel to go to,” responded Cicely, laughing.
They continued, therefore, to stay with Cousin Sarah Cray; they had been there ten days, and Jack was so much better that Eve gladly accepted her obligations, for the present. She accepted, too, the makeshifts of the rambling housekeeping. But if the housekeeping was of a wandering order, the welcome did not wander—it remained fixed; there was something beautiful in the boundless affection and hospitality of poverty-stricken Cousin Sarah Cray.
Bellington was a ruin. In the old days it had been the custom of the people of Gary Hundred, and the neighboring plantations, to drive thither now and then to spend an afternoon; the terraces and fish-ponds were still to be seen, together with the remains of the Dutch flower-garden, and the great underground kitchens of the house, which had been built of bricks imported from Holland a hundred and twenty years before. In the corner of one of the fields bordering the river were the earthworks of a Revolutionary fort; in a jungle a quarter of a mile distant there was a deserted church, with high pews, mouldering funeral hatchments, and even the insignia of George the Third in faded gilt over the organ-loft. Bellington House had been destroyed by fire, accidentally, in 1790. Now, when there were in the same neighborhood other houses which had been destroyed by fire, not accidentally, there was less interest in the older ruin. But it still served as an excuse for a drive, and drives were excellent for the young autocrat of the party, to whom all, including Miss Leontine, were shamelessly devoted.
The judge did his duty as guide; he had visited Bellington more times than he could count, but he again led the way (with appropriate discourse) from the fish-ponds to the fort, and from the fort to the church, Miss Leontine, in her floating veil, ambling beside him.
When the sun began to decline they returned to their pea-green wagon. The judge walked round it afresh. Then he turned away, put his head over a bush, and muttered on the other side of it.
“What is he saying?” Eve asked.
“I am afraid ‘cuss words,’ as the darkies call them,” answered Cicely, composedly. “He is without doubt a very desperate old man.”
Miss Leontine looked distressed, she made a pretext of gathering some leaves from a bush at a little distance; as she walked away, her skirt caught itself behind at each step upon the tops of her prunella boots, which were of the pattern called “Congress,” with their white straps visible.
“She is miserable because I called him that,” said Cicely; “she thinks him perfect. Grandpa, I have just called you a desperate old man.”
But the judge had resumed his grand manner; he assisted the ladies in climbing to their high seats, and then, mounting to his own place, he guided the horse down the uneven avenue and into the broad road again. The cotton plantations of this neighborhood had suffered almost as much as the rice fields of Romney: they had been flooded so often that much of the land was now worthless, disintegrated and overgrown with lespedeza. They crossed the river (which had done the damage) on—or rather in—a long shaking wooden bridge, covered and nearly dark, and guarding in its dusky recesses a strong odor of the stable. Beyond it the judge had an inspiration: he would go across the fields by one of the old cotton-tracks, thus shortening the distance by more than two miles.
“Because you’re ashamed of
‘Our pea-green wagon, our wagon of green,
Lillibulero, bullen-a-la,’”
chanted Cicely on the back seat.
“Cecilia!” said the judge, with dignity.
Eve sat beside him; courteously he entertained her. “Have you ever reflected, Miss Bruce, upon the very uninteresting condition of the world at present? Everything is known. Where can a gentleman travel now, with the element of the unexpected as a companion? There are positively no lands left unvulgarized save the neighborhood of the Poles.”
“Central Africa,” Eve suggested.
“Africa? I think I said for gentlemen.”
“You turbulent old despot, curb yourself,” said Cicely, sotto voce.
“In the old days, Miss Bruce,” the judge went on, “we had Arabia, we had Thibet, we had Cham-Tartary; we could arrive on camels at Erzerum. Hey! what are you about there, boy? Turn out!”
“Turn out yourself.”
The track had passed down into a winding hollow between sloping banks about six feet high; on the other side of a curve they had come suddenly upon an empty hay-cart which was approaching from the opposite direction, drawn by two mules; the driver, an athletic young negro with an insolent face, was walking beside his team. His broad cart filled every inch of the track; it was impossible to pass it without climbing the bank. The judge, with his heavy wagon and one horse, could not do this; but it would have been easy for the mules to take their light cart up the slope, and thus leave room for the wagon.
The old planter could not believe that he had heard aright. “Turn out, boy!” he repeated, with the imperious manner which only a lifetime of absolute authority can give.
The negro brought his mules up until their noses touched the nose of the horse; then, putting his hands in his pockets, he planted himself, and called out, “W’at yer gwine ter do ’bout it?”
In an instant the judge was on his feet, whip in hand. But Cicely touched him. “You are not going to fight with him, grandpa?” she said, in a low tone. “For he will fight; he isn’t in the least afraid of you.”
The judge had now reached the ground. In his rage he was white, with his eyes blazing. Eve, greatly alarmed, clasped little Jack closer.
Cicely jumped lightly down. “Grandpa,” she said, under her breath, “he is a great deal stronger than you are, and after he has struck you down we shall be here alone with him—think of that. We will all get out, and then you can lead the horse up the bank, and go by him. Dear grandpa, it is the only way; this isn’t the island, this is South Carolina.”
Eve, seeing the speechless passion of the old man, had not believed that Cicely would prevail; she had closed her eyes with a shuddering, horrible vision of the forward rush, the wrested whip, and the silver-haired head in the dust. But, with a mighty effort, trembling like a leaf with his repressed rage, the judge put up his hand to help her in her descent. She accepted his aid hurriedly, giving Jack to Cicely; Miss Leontine had climbed down alone, the tears dropping on her cheeks behind her veil. The judge then led the horse up the bank and past the wagon, the negro keeping his position beside his mules; the ladies followed the wagon, and mounted to their places again when it had reached the track, Cicely taking the seat by the side of her grandfather. Then they drove off, followed by the negro’s jeering laughter.
The old planter remained perfectly silent. Eve believed that, after he had deposited them safely at home, he would go back in search of that negro without fail. She and Cicely tried to keep up a conversation; Miss Leontine joined them whenever she was able, but the tears constantly succeeded each other on her long face, and she was as constantly putting her handkerchief to her eyes in order to repress them, the gesture much involved with her blue veil. On the borders of the village they passed the little railway station. By the side of the station-house there was a new shop, which had a broad show-window filled with wooden wash-tubs.
“This is the shop of Thomas Scotts, the tar-and-turpentine man who is in love with Matilda Debbs,” said Cicely. “How is that coming on now, Miss Leontine?”
Miss Leontine took down her handkerchief. “The family do not consent.”
“But there’s nothing against the man, is there?”
Miss Leontine took down the handkerchief again—she had already replaced it. “As regards his character, n-nothing. But he is a manufacturer of tubs. It appears that it is the business of the family; his father also manufactures them. In Connecticut.”
“If Thomas Scotts should make a beautiful new tub for each of the Misses Debbs, it wouldn’t be a bad idea; there are twelve or fourteen of them, aren’t there?”
“Ner-nine,” replied the afflicted maiden lady, with almost a convulsion of grief. “But two of them are yer-young yet.”
“And seven are not. Now seven new tubs.”
“Cecilia, let us have no more of this,” said the judge.
It was the first time he had spoken; Cicely put her hand behind her and furtively pinched Eve’s knee in token of triumph.
They came into the main street of Gary Hundred. It was a broad avenue, wandering vaguely onward amid four rows of trees; there was no pavement; the roadway was deeply covered with yellow sand; the spacious sidewalks which bordered it were equally in a state of nature. The houses, at some distance back from the street, were surrounded by large straggling gardens. Farther down were the shops, each with its row of hitching-posts across the front.
They left Miss Leontine at her own door, and went on towards the residence of Cousin Sarah Cray.
“Here comes Miss Polly’s bread-cart, on the way back from Mellons,” said Cicely. “Grandpa, wouldn’t it be a good idea to buy some little cakes?”
The judge stopped the horse; Cicely beckoned to the old negro who was wheeling the covered hand-cart along the sandy road. “Uncle Dan, have you any cakes left?”
Uncle Dan touched his hat, and opened the lid of the cart; there, reposing on snowy napkins, were biscuit and bread, and little cakes of inviting aspect. While Cicely made her selection, Eve bent down and took one of the circulars which were lying, neatly piled, in a corner. It announced, not in print, but in delicate hand-writing, that at the private bakery, number ten Queen Street, Gary Hundred, fresh bread, biscuits, and rolls could be obtained daily; muffins, crumpets, and plum-cake to order. The circular was signed “Mary Clementina Diana Wingfield.”
“They have names enough, those sisters,” Eve commented. “Miss Leontine’s is Clotilda Leontine Elizabeth; I saw it in her prayer-book.”
Cousin Sarah Cray’s residence was a large white house, with verandas encircling it both up stairs and down; the palings of the fence were half gone, the whole place looked pillaged and open. The judge drove up to the door and helped Cicely to descend; and then Eve, who had little Jack, fast asleep, in her arms. Cicely motioned to Eve to go into the house; she herself followed her grandfather as he led the horse round to the stables. Eve went in, carrying Jack and the cakes. Cousin Sarah Cray, hurrying down the stairs to meet her, took the child affectionately. “Dear little fellow, he begins to look right rosy.” She was delighted with the cakes. “They will help out the tea be-u-tifully; we’ve only got waffles.”
Instead of going to her room, Eve took a seat at the window; she was anxious about the judge.
“Miss Polly’s cakes are always so light,” pursued Cousin Sarah Cray, looking at them; “she never makes a mistake, there’s never the tinetiest streak of heaviness in her little pounds! And her breads are elegant, too; when one sees her beautiful hands, one wonders how she can do all the kneading.”
“Does she do it herself?”
“Every single bit; their old Susannah only heats the oven. It was a courageous idea, Miss Bruce, from the beginning; you know they are among our best people, and, after the war, they found themselves left with nothing in the world but their house. They could have kept school in it, of course, for they are accomplished beyond everything; Miss Leontine paints sweetly—she was educated in France. But there was no one to come to the school; the girls, of course, could not afford to go away.”
“You mean pupils?—to leave their homes and come here?”
“No, I mean the girls, Polly and Leontine; they could not open a school anywhere else—in Charleston, for instance; they had not money enough.”
“I beg your pardon—it was only that I did not recognize them as ‘the girls.’”
“Well, I suppose they really are not quite girls any longer,” responded Cousin Sarah Cray, thoughtfully. “Polly is forty-four and Leontine fifty-two; but I reckon they will always be ‘the girls’ to us, even if they’re eighty,” she added, laughing. “Well, Polly had this idea. And she has been so successful—you can’t think! Her bread-cart goes over to Mellons every day of your life, as regularly as the clock. And they buy a great deal.”
“It’s the camp, isn’t it?—Camp Mellons?”
“No; it has always been Mellons, Mellons Post-office. The camp is near there, and it has some Yankee name or other, I believe; but of course you know, my dear, that we never go there.”
“You only sell them bread. I am glad, at least, that they buy Miss Polly’s. And does Miss Leontine help?”
“I fancy not. Dear Miss Leontine is not as practical as Miss Polly; she has a soft poetical nature, and she makes beautiful afghans. But the judge prefers Miss Polly.”
“Does he really admire her?” said Eve, with a sudden inspiration.
“Beyond everything,” answered Cousin Sarah Cray, clasping her plump hands.
“Then will you please go out and tell him that she is coming here to tea, that she will be here immediately?”
“Mercy! But she won’t.”
“Yes, she will; I will go and ask her. Do please make haste, Mrs. Cray; we are so afraid, Cicely and I, that he will try to whip a negro.”
“Mercy!” said Cousin Sarah Cray again, this time in alarm; stout as she was, she ran swiftly through the hall and across the veranda, her cap strings flying, and disappeared on the way to the stables.
Eve carried little Jack up-stairs, and gave him to Deely, the house-maid; then, retracing her steps, she went out through the side-gate, and up the street to the home of the Misses Wingfield. The door stood open, Miss Polly was in the hall. She was a handsome woman, vigorous, erect, with clear blue eyes, and thick sandy hair closely braided round her well-shaped head. Eve explained her errand. “But perhaps Miss Leontine told you?” she added.
“No, Lonny told me nothing; she went straight to her room. I noticed that she had been crying; but she is so sweet that she cries rather easily. Whip, indeed! I’d rather shoot.”
“We must keep the judge from being whipped,” Eve answered.
“Yes, I suppose so; he is an old man, though he doesn’t look it. I will go with you, of course. Or rather I will follow you in a few moments.”
The post-office of Gary Hundred was opposite the Wingfield house; as Eve crossed the broad street on her way back, the postmaster appeared at his door, and beckoned to her mysteriously. He was a small elderly negro, with a dignified manner; he wore blue goggles; Eve knew him slightly, she had paid several visits to the office, and had been treated with deferential attention. When she reached the sidewalk, therefore, she paused.
“Would yer min’ droppin’ in fer one brief momen’, miss? ’Portant marter.”
Eve stepped over the low sill of the small building—it was hardly more than a shed, though smartly whitewashed, and adorned with bright green blinds—and the postmaster immediately closed the door. He then cautiously took from his desk a letter.
“Dere’s sump’n’ rudder quare ’bout dishyer letter, miss,” he said, glancing towards the window to see that no one was looking in. “Carn’t be too pertikler w’en it’s guv’ment business; en so we ’lowed to ax de favior ef you’d sorter glimpse yer eye ober it fer us.”
“Read a letter?” said Eve. “Whose letter?”
“Not de letter, but him outside, miss. Whoms is it? Dat’s de p’int. En I wouldn’t have you s’pose we ’ain’t guv it our bes’ cornsideration. We knows de looks ob mos’ ob ’em w’at comes yere; but dishyer one’s diffunt. Fuddermo’, de stamp’s diffunt too.”
The postmaster’s wife, a little yellow woman, was looking anxiously at them from the small window in the partition of the real post-office, a space six feet by three.
Eve took the letter. “It’s an English stamp. And the name is plainly written, ‘Henry Barker, Esquire; Gary Hundred.’”
“No sech pusson yere. Dat’s w’at I tol’ Mister Cotesworth,” said the yellow woman, triumphantly.
“Do you mean to tell me that you cannot read?” said Eve, surveying “Mister Cotesworth,” with astonishment.
The government official had, for the moment, an abashed look. “We ’lowed,” he began, “dat as you’s fum de Norf—”
But his wife interrupted him. “He reads better’n mos’, miss, Mister Cotesworth does. But his eyes done got so bad lately—dat’s w’at. Take de letter, Mister Cotesworth, and doan’ trouble de lady no mo’. Fine wedder, miss.” She came round and opened the door officiously; “seem lak we ’ain’t nebber see finer.”
Miss Polly arrived at Cousin Sarah Cray’s; she walked with apparent carelessness round towards the stables, where the judge was superintending the rubbing down and the feeding of the horse. A saddle had been brought out, and was hanging on the fence; Cousin Sarah hovered anxiously near.
“Grandpa is going out for a ride,” explained Cicely. “But I told him that the poor horse must be fed first, in common charity; he has been so far already—to Bellington and back.”
“Oh, but the judge is not going, now that I have come,” said Miss Polly; “he wouldn’t be so uncivil.” She went up to him; smiling winningly, she put out her beautiful hand.
The judge was always gallant; he took the fair hand, and, bending his head, deposited upon it a salute.
Miss Polly smiled still more graciously. “And is a stable-yard a place for such courtesies, judge?” she said, in her rich voice, with her luscious, indolent, Southern pronunciation. “Oh, surely not—surely not. Let us go to Cousin Sarah Cray’s parlor; I have something to tell you; in fact, I came especially to see you.” Looking very handsome and very straight, she took his arm with a caressing touch.
The judge admired Miss Polly deeply.
And Miss Polly kept a firm hold upon his arm.
The judge yielded.
VII.
“SEA-BEACHES,” said Eve,—“the minds of such people; you can trace the line of their last high tide, that is, the year when they stopped reading. Along the judge’s line, one finds, for instance, Rogers; he really has no idea that there have been any new poets since then.”
“Dear me! We have always thought Horatio remarkably literary,” protested Cousin Sarah Cray. “That’s his step now, I think.”
The judge came in, little Jack on his shoulder. “I believe he has dropped some—some portions of his clothing on the stairs,” he said, helplessly. “It’s astonishing—the facility he has.”
“And he has pulled off his shoes,” added Eve, taking the little reprobate and kissing him. “Naughty Jack. Tacks!”
“Esss, tacks!” repeated Jack, in high glee. “Dey gets in Jack’s foots.” That was all he cared for her warning legend.
The judge sat down and wiped his forehead. “I have received a shock,” he said.
“Pity’s sake!—what?” asked Cousin Sarah Cray, in alarm. Poor Cousin Sarah dealt in interjections. But it might be added that she had lived through times that were exclamatory.
“Our old friend, Roland Pettigru, is dead, Sarah; the news comes to us in this—this Sheet, which, I am told, is published here.” He drew a small newspaper from his pocket. “With your permission, ladies, I will read to you the opening sentence of an obituary notice which this—this Sheet—has prepared for the occasion.” He put on his spectacles, and, holding the paper off at a distance, read aloud, with slow, indignant enunciation, as follows: “‘The Great Reaper has descended amongst us. And this time he has carried back with him sadly brilliant sheaves; for his arrows have been shot at a shining mark’ (arrows for a reaper!” commented the judge, surveying his audience squintingly, over his glasses), "‘and the aim has been only too true. Gaunt Sorrow stalks abroad, we mourn with Pettigru Hill; we say—and we repeat—that the death of Roland Pettigru has left a vortex among us.’ Yes, vortex, ladies;—the death of a quiet, cultivated gentleman a vortex!”
At this moment Deely, the house-maid, appeared at the door; giving her calico skirt a twist by way of “manners,” she announced, “Miss Wungfy.”
Miss Leontine entered, carrying five books standing in a row upon her left arm as though it had been a shelf. She shook hands with Cousin Sarah Cray and Eve; then she went through the same ceremony with the judge, but in a confused, downcast manner, and seated herself on a slippery ottoman as near as possible to the door.
“I hope you liked the books? Pray let me take them,” said Eve, for Miss Leontine was still balancing them against her breast.
“Literature?” remarked the judge, who also seemed embarrassed. He took up one of the volumes and opened it. “Ah, a novel.”
“Yes, but one that will not hurt you,” Eve answered. “For Miss Leontine prefers those novels where the hero and heroine are married to begin with, and then fall in love with each other afterwards; everything on earth may happen to them during this process—poisonings and murders and shootings; she does not mind these in the least, for it’s sure in any case to be moral, don’t you see, because they were married in the beginning. And marriage makes everything perfectly safe; doesn’t it, Miss Leontine?”
“I am sure I don’t know,” answered Miss Leontine, still a prey to nervousness; “but—but I have always supposed so. Yes. We read them aloud,” she added, turning for relief to Cousin Sarah Cray; “that is, I read to Polly—in the evenings.”
“These modern novels seem to me poor productions,” commented the judge, turning over the pages of the volume he had taken.
“Naturally,” responded Eve.
“May I ask why ‘naturally’?”
“Oh, men who read their Montaigne year after year without change, and who quote Charles Lamb, never care for novels, unless, indeed, it may be ‘Tom Jones.’ Montaigne and Lamb, Latin quotations that are not hard, a glass of good wine with his dinner, and a convexity of person—these mark your non-appreciator of novels, from Warwickshire to Gary Hundred.”
“Upon my word, young lady—” began the judge, laughing.
But Miss Leontine, by her rising, interrupted him. “I think I must go now. Yes. Thank you.”
“But you have only just come,” said Cousin Sarah Cray.
“I stopped to leave the books. Yes; really; that was all. Thanks, you are very kind. Yes; thank you.” She fumbled ineffectually for the handle of the door, and, when it was opened for her, with an embarrassed bow she passed out, her long back bent forward, her step hurried.
“I can’t imagine what is the matter with her,” said Cousin Sarah Cray, returning.
“I am afraid, Sarah, that I can inform you,” answered the judge gravely, putting down the volume. “I met her in her own garden about an hour ago, and we fell into conversation; I don’t know what possessed me, but in relating some anecdote of a jocular nature which happened to be in my mind at the time, by way of finish—I can’t imagine what I was thinking of—but I up and chucked her under the chin.”
“Chucked Miss Leontine!” exclaimed Cousin Sarah Cray, aghast, while Eve gave way to irrepressible mirth. “Was she—was she deeply offended?”
“She was simply paralyzed with astonishment. I venture to say”—here the judge sent an eye-beam towards the laughing Eve—“I venture to say that Miss Leontine has never been chucked under the chin in all her life before.”
“Certainly not,” answered Cousin Sarah Cray; “she is far too dignified.” Then, with a desire to be strictly truthful, she added, “Perhaps when she was a baby?”
But even this seemed doubtful.
Not long after this the Misses Wingfield (it was really Miss Polly) gave a party.
“Must we go?” said Eve.
“Why, it will be perfectly delightful!” answered Cousin Sarah Cray, looking at her in astonishment. “Every one will be there. Let me see: there will be ourselves, four; and Miss Polly and Miss Leontine, six; then the Debbses, thirteen—fourteen if Mrs. Debbs comes; the Rev. Mr. Bushey and his wife, sixteen. And perhaps there will be some one else,” she added, hopefully; “perhaps somebody has some one staying with them.”
“Thomas Scotts, the tub man, will not be invited,” remarked Cicely. “He will walk by on the outside. And look in.”
“There’s nothing I admire more than the way you pronounce that name Debbs,” observed Eve. “It’s plain Debbs; yet you call it Dessss—holding on to all the s’s, and hardly sounding the b at all—so that you almost make it rhyme with noblesse.”
“That’s because we like ’em, I reckon,” responded Cousin Sarah Cray. “They certainly are the sweetest family!”
“There’s a faint trace of an original theme in Matilda. The others are all variations,” said the caustic Miss Bruce.
They went to the party.
“Theme and variations all here,” said Cicely, as they passed the open door of the parlor on their way up-stairs to lay aside their wraps; “they haven’t spared us a trill.”
“Well, you won’t be spared either,” said Cousin Sarah Cray. “You’ll have to sing.”
She proved a true prophet; Cicely was called upon to add what she could to the entertainments of the evening. Her voice was slender and clear; to-night it pleased her to sing straight on, so rapidly that she made mince-meat of the words of her song, the delicate little notes almost seeming to come from a flute, or from a mechanical music-bird screwed to a chandelier. Later, however, Miss Matilda Debbs supplied the missing expression when she gave them:
“Slee—ping, I dreamed, love,
Dreamed, love, of thee;
O’er—ther—bright waves, love,
Float—ing were we.”
Cicely seemed possessed by one of her wild moods. “I’ve been to the window; the tar-and-turpentine man is looking over the gate,” she said, in a low voice, to Eve. “I’m going out to say to him, ‘Scotts, wha hae! Send in a tub.’”
Presently she came by Eve’s chair again. “Have you seen the geranium in Miss Leontine’s hair? Let us get grandpa out on the veranda with her, alone; she has been madly in love with him ever since he chucked her under the chin. What’s more, grandpa knows it, too, and he’s awfully frightened; he always goes through the back streets now, like a thief.”
There was a peal at the door-bell. “Tar-and-turpentine man coming in,” murmured Cicely.
Susannah appeared with a letter. “Fer Mis’ Morrison,” she said.
There was a general laugh. For “Mister Cotesworth,” not sure that Eve would keep his secret, and alarmed for the safety of his official position, had taken to delivering his letters in person; clad in his best black coat, with a silk hat, the blue goggles, and a tasselled cane, he not only delivered them with his own hands, but he declaimed the addresses in a loud tone at the door. Not finding Cicely at home, he had followed her hither. “Fer Mis’ Fer’nen Morrison. A ferwerded letter,” he said to Susannah in the hall, at the top of his voice.
The judge had gone to the dining-room with Miss Polly, to see her little dog, which was ailing. Cicely put the letter in her pocket.
After a while she said to Eve, “I never have any letters, hardly.”
“But you must have,” Eve answered.
“No; almost never. I am going up-stairs for a moment, Eve. Don’t come with me.”
When she returned, more music was going on. As soon as she could, Eve said, inquiringly, “Well?”
“It was from Ferdie.”
“Yes,” responded Cicely, unmoved.
Eve’s thoughts had flown to her own plans. But she found time to think, “What a cold little creature it is, after all!”
At that moment they could say no more.
About midnight, when Eve was in her own room, undressing, there was a tap at the door, and Cicely entered. She had taken off her dress; a forlorn little blue shawl was drawn tightly round her shoulders.
She walked to the dressing-table, where Eve was sitting, took up a brush, and looked at it vaguely. “I didn’t mean to tell any one; but I have changed my mind, I am going to tell you.” Putting down the brush, she let the shawl fall back. There across her white breast was a long purple scar, and a second one over her delicate little shoulder. “He did it,” she said. Her eyes, fixed upon Eve’s, were proud and brilliant.
“You don’t mean—you don’t mean that your husband—” stammered Eve, in horror.
“Yes, Ferdie. He did it.”
“Is he mad?”
“Only after he has been drinking.”
“Oh, you poor little thing!” said Eve, taking her in her arms protectingly. “I have been so hard to you, Cicely, so cruel! But I did not know—I did not know.” Her tears flowed.
“I am telling you on account of baby,” Cicely went on, in the same unmoved tone.
“Has he dared to touch baby?” said Eve, springing up.
“Yes, Eve; he broke poor baby’s little arm; of course when he did not know what he was doing. When he gets that way he does not know us; he thinks we are enemies, and he thinks it is his duty to attack us. Once he put us out-of-doors—baby and me—in the middle of the night, with only our night-dresses on; fortunately it wasn’t very cold. That time, and the time he broke baby’s arm (he seized him by the arm and flung him out of his crib), we were not in Savannah; we were off by ourselves for a month, we three. Baby was so young that the bone was easily set. Nobody ever knew about it, I never told. But—but it must not happen again.” She looked at Eve with the same unmoved gaze.
“I should rather think not! Give him to me, Cicely, and let me take him away—at least for the present. You know you said—”
“I said ‘perhaps.’ But I cannot let him go now—not just now. I am telling you what has happened because you really seem to care for him.”
“I think I have showed that I care for him!”
“Well, I have let you.”
“What are we to do, then, if you won’t let me take him away?” said Eve, in despair. “Will that man come here?”
“He may. He will go to Savannah, and if he learns there that I am here, he may follow me. But he will never go to Romney, he doesn’t like Romney; even in the beginning, when I begged him to go, he never would. He—” She paused.
“Jealous, I suppose,” suggested the sister, with a bitter laugh—“jealous of Jack’s poor bones in the burying-ground. Your two ghosts will have a duel, Cicely.”
“Oh, Ferdie isn’t dead!” said Cicely, with sudden terror. She grasped Eve’s arm. “Have you heard anything? Tell me—tell me.”
Eve looked at her.
“Yes, I love him,” said Cicely, answering the look. “I have loved him ever since the first hour I saw him. It’s more than love; it’s adoration.”
“You never said that of Jack.”
“No; for it wouldn’t have been true.”
The two women faced each other—the tall Eve, the dark little wife.
“Oh, if I could only get away from this hideous country—this whole horrible South!” said Eve, walking up and down the room like a caged tigress.
“You would like him if you knew him,” Cicely went on, gently. “It seldom happens—that other; and when it doesn’t happen, Eve—”
Eve put out her hand with a repelling gesture. “Let me take baby and go.”
“Not now. But he will be safe at Romney.”
“In Heaven’s name, then, let us get him back to Romney.”
“Yes; to-morrow.”
Little Jack was asleep in his crib by the side of Eve’s bed, for she still kept him with her at night. Cicely went to the crib and looked at her child; Eve followed her.
The little boy’s night-dress had fallen open, revealing one shoulder and arm. “It was just here,” whispered Cicely, kneeling down and softly touching the baby-flesh. She looked up at Eve, her eyes thick with tears.
“Why, you care?” said Eve. “Care for him?—the baby, I mean.” She spoke her thoughts aloud, unwittingly.
“Did you think I didn’t care?” asked Cicely, with a smile.
It was the strangest smile Eve had ever seen.