CHAPTER IV—THE ONE WOMAN

GASTON called at the post-office to get his mail.

One relief the Cleveland administration had brought Hambright—a decent citizen in charge of the post-office. Dave Haley had given place to a Democrat and was now scheming and working with McLeod for the “salvation” of it the state, which of course meant for the old slave trader the restoration of his office under a Republican administration. If the South had held no other reason for hating the Republican party, the character of the men appointed to Federal office was enough to send every honest man hurrying into the opposite party without asking any questions as to its principles.

Sam Love, the new postmaster was a jovial, honest, lazy, good-natured Democrat whose ideal of a luxurious life was attained in his office. He handed Gaston his mail with a giggle.

“What’s the matter with you, Sam?”

“Nuthin’ ‘tall. I just thought I’d tell you that I like her handwriting,” he laughed.

“How dare you study the handwriting on my letters, sir!”

“What’s the use of being postmaster? There ain’t no big money in it. I just take pride in the office,” said Sam genially. “That’s a new one, ain’t it?”

Gaston looked at the letter incredulously. It was a new one,—a big square envelope with a seal on the back of it, addressed to him in the most delicate feminine hand, and postmarked “Independence.”

“Great Scott, this is interesting,” he cried, breaking the seal.

When the postmaster saw he was going to open it right there in the office, he stepped around in front and looking over his shoulder said, “What is it, Charlie?”

“It’s an invitation from the Ladies’ Memorial Association to deliver the Memorial day oration at Independence the 10th of May. That’s great. No money in it, but scores of pretty girls, big speech, congratulations, the lion of the hour! Don’t you wish you were really a man of brains, Sam?”

“No, no, I’m married. It would be a waste now.”

“Sam, I ’ll be there. Got the biggest speech of my life all cocked and primed, full of pathos and eloquence,—been working on it at odd times for four years. They ’ll think it a sudden inspiration.”

“What’s the name of it?”

“The Message of the New South to the Glorious Old.”

“That sounds bully, that ought to fetch ’em.”

“It will, my boy, and when Dave Haley gets this postoffice away from you in the dark days coming, I ’ll publish that speech in a pamphlet, and you can peddle it at a quarter and make a good living for your children.”

“Don’t talk like that, Gaston, that isn’t funny at all. You don’t think the Radicals have got any chance?”

“Chance! Between you and me they ’ll win.”

Sam went back to the desk without another word, a great fear suddenly darkening the future. McLeod had gotten off the same joke on him the day before. It sounded ominous coming from both sides like that. He took up his party paper, “The Old Timer’s Gazette” and read over again the sure prophecies of victory and felt better.

Gaston accepted the invitation with feverish haste. He had it all ready to put in the office for the return mail to Independence. But he was ashamed to appear in such a hurry, so he held the letter over until the next day. He proudly showed the invitation to Mrs. Durham.

“What do you think of that, Auntie?”

“Immense. You will meet Miss Sallie sure. That letter is in her handwriting. She’s the Secretary of the Association and signed the Committee’s names.”

“You don’t say that’s the great and only one’s handwriting!”

“Couldn’t be mistaken. It has a delicate distinction about it. I’d know it anywhere.”

“It is beautiful,” acknowledged Gaston looking thoughtfully at the letter.

“I wish you had a new suit, Charlie.”

“I wouldn’t mind it myself, if I had the money. But clothes don’t interest me much, just so I’m fairly decent.”

“I ’ll loan you the money, if you will promise me to devote yourself faithfully to Sallie.”

“Never. I ’ll not sell my interest in all those acres of pretty girls just for one I never saw and a suit of clothes. No thanks. I’m going down there with a premonition I may find Her of whom I’ve dreamed. They say that town is full of beauties.”

“You’re so conceited. That’s all the more reason you should look your best.”

“I don’t care so much about looks. I’m going to do my best, whatever I look.”

“Oh, you know you’re good looking and you don’t care,” said his foster mother with pride.

On the 10th of May Independence was in gala robes. The long rows of beautiful houses, with dark blue grass lawns on which giant oaks spread their cool arms, were gay with bunting, and with flowers, flowers everywhere! Every urchin on the street and every man, woman and child wore or carried flowers.

The reception committee met Gaston at the depot on the arrival of the excursion train that ran from Ham-bright. He was placed in an open carriage beside a handsome chattering society woman, and drawn by two prancing horses, was escorted to the hotel, where he was introduced to the distinguished old soldiers of the Confederacy.

At ten o’clock the procession was formed. What a sight! It stretched from the hotel down the shaded pavements a mile toward the cemetery, two long rows of beautiful girls holding great bouquets of flowers. This long double line of beauty and sweetness opened, and escorted gravely by the oldest General of the Confederacy present, he walked through this mile of smiling girls and flowers. Behind him tramped the veterans, some with one arm, some with wooden legs.

When they passed through, the double line closed, and two and two the hundreds of girls carried their flowers in solemn procession. Here was the throbbing soul of the South, keeping fresh the love of her heroic dead.

They spread out over the great cemetery like a host of ministering angels. There was a bugle call. They bent low a moment, and flowers were smiling over every grave from the greatest to the lowliest.

And then to a stone altar marked “To the Unknown Dead,” they came and heaped up roses. Then a group of sad-faced women dressed in black, with quaint little bonnets wreathing their brows like nuns, went silently over to the National Cemetery across the way and each taking a basket, walked past the long lines of the dead their boys had fought and dropped a single rose on every soldier’s grave. They were women whose boys were buried in strange lands in lonely unmarked trenches. They were doing now what they hoped some woman’s hand would do for their lost heroes.

The crowd silently gathered around the speakers’ stand and took their seats in the benches placed beneath the trees.

Gaston had never seen this ceremony so lavishly and beautifully performed before. He was overwhelmed with emotion. His father’s straight soldierly figure rose before him in imagination, and with him all the silent hosts that now bivouacked with the dead. His soul was melted with the infinite pathos and pity of it all.

He had intended to say some sharp epigrammatic things that would cut the chronic moss-backs that cling to the platforms on such occasions. But somehow when he began they were melted out of his speech. He spoke with a tenderness and reverence that stilled the crowd in a moment like low music.

His tribute to the dead was a poem of rhythmic and exalted thoughts. The occasion was to him an inspiration and the people hung breathless on his words. His voice was never strained but was penetrated and thrilled with thought packed until it burst into the flame of speech. He felt with conscious power his mastery of his audience. He was surprised at his own mood of extraordinary tenderness as he felt his being softened by that oldest religion of the ages, the worship of the dead—as old as sorrow and as everlasting as death! He was for the moment clay in the hands of some mightier spirit above him.

He had spoken perhaps fifteen minutes when suddenly, straight in front of him, he looked into the face of the One Woman of all his dreams!

There she sat as still as death, her beautiful face tense with breathless interest, her fluted red lips parted as if half in wonder, half in joy, over some strange revelation, and her great blue eyes swimming in a mist of tears. He smiled a look of recognition into her soul and she answered with a smile that seemed to say “I’ve known you always. Why haven’t you seen me sooner?” He recognised her instantly from Mrs. Durham’s description and his heart gave a cry of joy. From that moment every word that he uttered was spoken to her. Sometimes as he would look straight through her eyes into her soul, she would flush red to the roots of her brown-black hair, but she never lowered her gaze. He closed his speech in a round of applause that was renewed again and again.

His old classmate, Bob St. Clare, rushed forward to greet him.

“Old fellow, you’ve covered yourself with glory. By George, that was great! Come, here’s a hundred girls want to meet you.”

He was introduced to a host of beauties who showered him with extravagant compliments which he accepted without affectation. He knew he had outdone himself that day, and he knew why. The One Woman he had been searching the world for was there, and inspired him beyond all he had ever dared before.

He was disappointed in not seeing her among the crowd who were shaking his hand. He looked anxiously over the heads of those near by to see if she had gone. He saw her standing talking to two stylishly dressed young men.

When the crowd had melted away from the rostrum, she walked straight toward him extending her hand with a gracious smile.

He knew he must look like a fool, but to save him he could not help it, he was simply bubbling over with delight as he grasped her hand, and before she could say a word he said, “You are Miss Sallie Worth, the Secretary of the Association. My foster mother has described you so accurately I should know you among a thousand.”

“Yes, I have been looking forward with pleasure to our trip to the Springs when I knew we should meet you. I am delighted to see you a month earlier.” She said this with a simple earnestness that gave it a deeper meaning than a mere commonplace.

“Do you know that you nearly knocked me off my feet when I first saw you in the crowd?”

“Why? How?” she asked.

“You startled me.”

“I hope not unpleasantly,” she said, looking up at him with her blue eyes twinkling.

“Oh! Heavens no! You are such a perfect image of the girl she described that I was so astonished I came near shouting at the top of my voice, ‘There she is!’ And that would have astonished the audience, wouldn’t it?”

“It would indeed,” she replied blushing just a little.

“But I’m forgetting my mission, Mr. Gaston. Papa sent me to apologise for his absence to-day. He was called out of the city on some mill business. He told me to bring you home to dine with him. I’m the Secretary, you know and exercise authority in these matters, so I’ve fixed that programme. You have no choice. The carriage is waiting.”