I presume you are speaking now of young Miss Dows? said Courtland dryly.
Miss Sallyof coursealways, said Champney simply. She runs the shop.
Were there not some French investorsrelations of Miss Dows? Does anybody represent THEM? asked Courtland pointedly.
Yet he was not quite prepared for the naive change in his companions face. No. There was a sort of French cousin who used to be a good deal to the fore, dont you know? But I rather fancy he didnt come here to look after the PROPERTY, returned Champney with a quick laugh. I think the aunt must have written to his friends, for they called him off, and I dont think Miss Sally broke her heart about him. Shes not that sort of girleh? She could have her pick of the State if she went in for that sort of thingeh?
Although this was exactly what Courtland was thinking, it pleased him to answer in a distrait sort of fashion, Certainly, I should think so, and to relapse into an apparently business abstraction.
I think I wont go in, continued Champney as they neared the house again. I suppose youll have something more to say to Miss Dows. If theres anything else you want of ME, come to the office. But SHELL know. Andererif youreerstaying long in this part of the country, ride over and look me up, dont you know? and have a smoke and a julep; I have a boy who knows how to mix them, and Ive some old brandy sent me from the other side. Good-by.
More awkward in his kindliness than in his simple business confidences, but apparently equally honest in both, he shook Courtlands hand and walked away. Courtland turned towards the house. He had seen the farm and its improvements; he had found some of his own ideas practically discounted; clearly there was nothing left for him to do but to thank his hostess and take his leave. But he felt far more uneasy than when he had arrived; and there was a singular sense of incompleteness in his visit that he could not entirely account for. His conversation with Champney had complicatedhe knew not whyhis previous theories of Miss Dows, and although he was half conscious that this had nothing to do with the business that brought him there, he tried to think that it had. If Miss Sally was reallyaadistracting element to contiguous man, it was certainly something to be considered in a matter of business of which she would take a managerial part. It was true that Champney had said she was not that sort of girl, but this was the testimony of one who was clearly under her influence. He entered the house through the open French window. The parlor was deserted. He walked through the front hall and porch; no one was there. He lingered a few moments, a slight chagrin beginning to mingle with his uneasiness. She might have been on the lookout for him. She or Sophy must have seen him returning. He would ring for Sophy, and leave his thanks and regrets for her mistress. He looked for a bell, touched it, but on being confronted with Sophy, changed his mind and asked to SEE Miss Dows. In the interval between her departure and the appearance of Miss Sally he resolved to do the very thing which he had dismissed from his thoughts but an hour before as ill-timed and doubtful. He had the photograph and letter in his pocket; he would make them his excuse for personally taking leave of her.
She entered with her fair eyebrows lifted in a pretty surprise.
I declare to goodness, I thought yo d ridden over to the red barn and gone home from there. I got through my work on the vines earlier than I thought. One of Judge Garrets nephews dropped in in time to help me with the last row. Yo neednt have troubled yoself to send up for me for mere company manners, but Sophy says yo looked sort of anxious and particular when yo asked for meso I suppose yo want to see me for something.
Mentally objurgating Sophy, and with an unpleasant impression in his mind of the unknown neighbor who had been helping Miss Sally in his place, he nevertheless tried to collect himself gallantly.
I dont know what my expression conveyed to Sophy, he said with a smile, but I trust that what I have to tell you may be interesting enough to make you forget my second intrusion. He paused, and still smiling continued: For more than three years, Miss Dows, you have more or less occupied my thoughts; and although we have actually met to-day only for the first time, I have during that time carried your image with me constantly. Even this meeting, which was only the result of an accident, I had been seeking for three years. I find you here under your own peaceful vine and fig-tree, and yet three years ago you came to me out of the thunder-cloud of battle.
My good gracious! said Miss Sally.
She had been clasping her knee with her linked fingers, but separated them and leaned backward on the sofa with affected consternation, but an expression of growing amusement in her bright eyes. Courtland saw the mistake of his tone, but it was too late to change it now. He handed her the locket and the letter, and briefly, and perhaps a little more seriously, recounted the incident that had put him in possession of them. But he entirely suppressed the more dramatic and ghastly details, and his own superstition and strange prepossession towards her.
Miss Sally took the articles without a tremor, or the least deepening or paling of the delicate, faint suffusion of her cheek. When she had glanced over the letter, which appeared to be brief, she said, with smiling, half-pitying tranquillity:
Yes!it WAS that poor Chet Brooks, sure! I heard that he was killed at Snake River. It was just like him to rush in and get killed the first pop! And all for nothing, too,pure foolishness!
Shocked, yet relieved, but uneasy under both sensations, Courtland went on blindly:
But he was not the only one, Miss Dows. There was another man picked up who also had your picture.
YesJoyce Masterton. They sent it to me. But you didnt kill HIM, too?
I dont know that I personally killed either, he said a little coldly. He paused, and continued with a gravity which he could not help feeling very inconsistent and even ludicrous: They were brave men, Miss Dows.
To have worn my picture? said Miss Sally brightly.
To have THOUGHT they had so much to live for, and yet to have willingly laid down their lives for what they believed was right.
Yo didnt go huntin me for three years to tell ME, a Sothn girl, that Sothn men know how to fight, did yo, connle? returned the young lady, with the slightest lifting of her head and drooping of her blue-veined lids in a divine hauteur. They were always ready enough for that, even among themselves. It was much easier for these pooah boys to fight a thing out than think it out, or work it out. Yo folks in the Noth learned to do all three; thats where you got the grip on us. Yo look surprised, connle.
I didnt expect you would look at itquite ininthat way, said Courtland awkwardly.
I am sorry I disappointed yo after yo d taken such a heap o trouble, returned the young lady with a puzzling assumption of humility as she rose and smoothed out her skirts, but I couldnt know exactly what yo might be expecting after three years; if I HAD, I might have put on moning. She stopped and adjusted a straying tendril of her hair with the sharp corner of the dead mans letter. But I thank yo, all the same, connle. It was real good in yo to think of toting these things over here. And she held out her hand frankly.
Courtland took it with the sickening consciousness that for the last five minutes he had been an unconscionable ass. He could not prolong the interview after she had so significantly risen. If he had only taken his leave and kept the letter and locket for a later visit, perhaps when they were older friends! It was too late now. He bent over her hand for a moment, again thanked her for her courtesy, and withdrew. A moment later she heard the receding beat of his horses hoofs on the road.
Courtland took it with the sickening consciousness that for the last five minutes he had been an unconscionable ass. He could not prolong the interview after she had so significantly risen. If he had only taken his leave and kept the letter and locket for a later visit, perhaps when they were older friends! It was too late now. He bent over her hand for a moment, again thanked her for her courtesy, and withdrew. A moment later she heard the receding beat of his horses hoofs on the road.
She opened the drawer of a brass-handled cabinet, and after a moments critical survey of her picture in the dead mans locket, tossed it and the letter into the recesses of the drawer. Then she stopped, removed her little slipper from her foot, looked at THAT, too, thoughtfully, and called Sophy!
Miss Sally? said the girl, reappearing at the door.
Are you sure you did not move that ladder?
I clare to goodness, Miss Sally, I never teched it!
Miss Sally directed a critical glance at her handmaidens red-coifed head. No, she said to herself softly, it felt nicer than wool, anyway!
CHAPTER III
In spite of the awkward termination of his visit,or perhaps BECAUSE of it,Courtland called again at the plantation within the week. But this time he was accompanied by Drummond, and was received by Miss Miranda Dows, a tall, aquiline-nosed spinster of fifty, whose old-time politeness had become slightly affected, and whose old beliefs had given way to a half-cynical acceptance of new facts. Mr. Drummond, delighted with the farm and its management, was no less fascinated by Miss Sally, while Courtland was now discreet enough to divide his attentions between her and her aunt, with the result that he was far from participating in Champneys conviction of Miss Mirandas unimportance. To the freedmen she still represented the old implacable task-mistress, and it was evident that they superstitiously believed that she still retained a vague power of overriding the Fourteenth Amendment at her pleasure, and was only to be restrained by the mediation of the good-humored and sensible Miss Sally. Courtland was quick to see the value of this influence in the transition state of the freedmen, and pointed it out to his principal. Drummonds previous doubts and skepticism, already weakened by Miss Sallys fascinations, vanished entirely at this prospect of beneficially utilizing these lingering evils of slavery. He was convinced, he was even enthusiastic. The foreign investors were men to be bought out; the estate improved and enlarged by the company, and the fair owners retained in the management and control. Like most prejudiced men, Drummonds conversion was sudden and extreme, and, being a practical man, was at once acted upon. At a second and third interview the preliminaries were arranged, and in three weeks from Courtlands first visit, the Dows plantation and part of Major Reeds were merged in the Drummond Syndicate, and placed beyond financial uncertainty. Courtland remained to represent the company as superintendent at Redlands, and with the transfer of the English investments Champney retired, as he had suggested, to a smaller venture of his own, on a plantation a few miles distant which the company had been unable to secure.
During this interval Courtland had frequent interviews with Miss Sally, and easy and unrestrained access to her presence. He had never again erred on the side of romance or emotion; he had never again referred to the infelix letter and photograph; and, without being obliged to confine himself strictly to business affairs, he had maintained an even, quiet, neighborly intercourse with her. Much of this was the result of his own self-control and soldierly training, and gave little indication of the deeper feeling that he was conscious lay beneath it. At times he caught the young girls eyes fixed upon him with a mischievous curiosity. A strange thrill went through him; there are few situations so subtle and dangerous as the accidental confidences and understandings of two young people of opposite sex, even though the question of any sentimental inclination be still in abeyance. Courtland knew that Miss Sally remembered the too serious attitude he had taken towards her past. She might laugh at it, and even resent it, but she KNEW it, remembered it, knew that HE did, and this precious knowledge was confined to themselves. It was in their minds when there was a pause in their more practical and conventional conversation, and was even revealed in the excessive care which Miss Sally later took to avert at the right moment her mischievously smiling eyes. Once she went farther. Courtland had just finished explaining to her a plan for substituting small farm buildings for the usual half-cultivated garden-patches dear to the negro field-hand, and had laid down the drawings on the table in the office, when the young lady, leaning against it with her hands behind her, fixed her bright gray eyes on his serious face.
I vow and protest, connle, she said, dropping into one of the quaint survivals of an old-time phraseology peculiar to her people, I never allowed yo could just give yoself up to business, soul and body, as yo do, when I first met yo that day.
Why, what did you think me? he asked quickly.
Miss Sally, who had a Southern aptitude for gesture, took one little hand from behind her, twirled it above her head with a pretty air of disposing of some airy nothing in a presumably masculine fashion, and said, Oh, THAT.
I am afraid I did not impress you then as a very practical man, he said, with a faint color.
I thought you roosted rather high, connle, to pick up many worms in the moning. But, she added with a dazzling smile, I reckon from what yo said about the photograph, yo thought I wasnt exactly what yo believed I ought to be, either.
He would have liked to tell her then and there that he would have been content if those bright, beautiful eyes had never kindled with anything but love or womanly aspiration; that that soft, lazy, caressing voice had never been lifted beyond the fireside or domestic circle; that the sunny, tendriled hair and pink ears had never inclined to anything but whispered admiration; and that the graceful, lithe, erect figure, so independent and self-contained, had been satisfied to lean only upon his arm for support. He was conscious that this had been in his mind when he first saw her; he was equally conscious that she was more bewilderingly fascinating to him in her present inaccessible intelligence and practicality.
I confess, he said, looking into her eyes with a vague smile, I did not expect you would be so forgetful of some one who had evidently cared for you.
Meaning Mr. Chet Brooks, or Mr. Joyce Masterton, or both. Thats like most yo men, connle. Yo reckon because a girl pleases yo she ought to be grateful all her lifeand yors, too! Yo think different now! But yo neednt act up to it quite so much. She made a little deprecating gesture with her disengaged hand as if to ward off any retaliating gallantry. I aint speaking for myself, connle. Yo and me are good enough friends. But the girls round here think yo re a trifle too much taken up with rice and niggers. And looking at it even in yor light, connle, it aint BUSINESS. Yo want to keep straight with Major Reed, so it would be just as well to square the majors woman folks. Tavy and Gussie Reed aint exactly poisonous, connle, and yo might see one or the other home from church next Sunday. The Sunday after that, just to show yo aint particular, and that yo go in for being a regular beau, yo might walk home with ME. Dont be frightenedIve got a better gown than this. Its a new one, just come home from Louisville, and Ill wear it for the occasion.