CHAPTER XI—THE OLD OLD STORY

WHEN Gaston arrived in Independence he went direct to St. Clare’s.

“Where the Dickens have you been, Gaston?”

“Jumping from Murphy to Manteo making love to hayseed statesmen.”

“What luck?”

“They’re all crazy. They swear they are going to have the United States establish a Sub-Treasury in Raleigh and issue Government script they can use as money on their pumpkins, or they are going to tear the nation to tatters and vote for a nigger for Governor if necessary!”

“Can’t you get into their fool heads that an alliance with the Republican party is the last way on earth for them to go about their Sub-Treasury schemes?”

“Can’t seem to do a thing with them. McLeod’s stuffed them full. I’m sick of it. I’ve a notion to let them go with the niggers and go to the devil. It’s growing on me that there must be another way out. I can’t get down in the dirt and prostitute my intellect and lie to these fools. We’ve got to get rid of the Negro.”

“A large job, old man.”

“Yes, it is, and thank God I’m done with it for a week. I’m going to heaven now for a few days. I ’ll see her in an hour. I rise on tireless wings!”

“Look out you don’t come down too suddenly. The earth may feel hard.”

“Bob, I’m going to risk it. I’m going to look fate squarely in the face and get my answer like a little man, for life or death.”

Mrs. Worth met Gaston and greeted him with warmest cordiality.

“We are charmed to welcome you to Oakwood again, Mr. Gaston.”

“I assure you, Mrs. Worth, I never saw a home so beautiful. I feel as though I am in paradise when I get here.”

“I hope to see more of you this time, I feel that I know you so much better since our talk at the Springs.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Worth.” He said this so simply and earnestly she could but feel his deep appreciation of her attitude of welcome.

“Sallie will be down in a minute.”

Gaston smiled in spite of himself.

“What are you laughing at?”

“I was just thinking how sweetly her name sounded on your lips.”

“Do you like these old-fashioned Southern names?”

“I think they are lovely.”

“Well, that’s my name too.”

Sallie suddenly stepped from the hall into the doorway.

“Now, Mama, there you are again carrying on with one of my beaux! I don’t know what I will do with you!”

Mrs. Worth actually blushed, sprang up and struck Sallie lightly on the arm with her fan exclaiming, “Oh! you sly thing, to stand out there and listen to what I said! Mr. Gaston I turn her over to you to punish her for such conduct.”

“Isn’t she a dear?” said Sallie when her mother was gone.

“I was charmed with her at the Springs, but the gracious way she made me feel at home this morning completely won my heart.”

“I can do anything with Mama. She’s the dearest mother that ever lived. She always seems to know intuitively my heart’s wish, and, if it’s best, give it to me, and if it’s not, she makes me cease to desire it. I wish I could manage Papa as easily.”

“I’m sure he idolises you, Miss Sallie.”

“He does, but when he lays the law down, that settles it. I can’t move him one inch.”

“That’s the way with forceful men, who do things in the world.”

“Well, I confess I like to have my own way sometimes. I wonder if you are like that?”

“I ’ll be frank with you. Somehow I never could be anything else if I tried. I don’t think a man of strong character will yield to every whim of a woman, whether wife or daughter.”

“I heard of a man the other day who whipped his wife,” she said in a far away tone of voice. “Come, my horse is ready, go with me for another ride to-day. I am going to take you across the river and show you a pretty drive over there.”

They were soon lost in the deep shadows of the stately pine forest that lay beyond the Catawba. The road was a cross-country narrow way that wound in and out around the big trees.

They jogged slowly along while he bathed his soul in the joy of her presence. Oh, to be alone and near her! There seemed to him a magic power in the touch of her dress as she sat in the little buggy so close by his side. For hours, again he lay at her feet and drank the wine of her beauty until his heart was drunk with love.

Once he opened his lips to tell her, and a great fear awed him into silence. He longed to pour out to her his passion, but feared her answer. He Had studied her every word and tone and look and hand-pressure since he had known her. He was sure she loved him. And yet he was not sure. She was so skilled in the science of self defence, so subtle a mistress of all the arts of polite society in which the soul’s deepest secrets are hid from the world, he was paralysed now as the moment drew near. He put it off another day and gave himself up to the pure delight of her face and form and voice and presence.

That evening when she entered the home her mother caught her hand and softly whispered, “Did he court you to-day, Sallie?”

She shook her head smilingly. “No, but I think he will to-morrow.”

St. Clare was sitting on his veranda awaiting Gaston’s return.

“What luck, old boy?” he eagerly asked.

“Couldn’t say a word. I ’ll do it to-morrow or die.”

“Shake hands partner. I’ve been there.”

“Bob, it’s a serious thing to run up against a little answer ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ that means life or death.”

“Feel like you’d rather live on hope a while, and let things drift, don’t you?”

“Exactly, I think I can understand for the first time in my life that awful look in a prisoner’s face on trial for his life, when he watches the lips of the foreman of the jury to catch the first letter of the verdict. I used to think that an interesting psychological study. By George, I feel I am his brother now.”

The next day was perfect. The warm life-giving sun of June was tempered by breezes that swept fresh and invigorating over the earth that had been drenched with showers in the night. The woods were ringing with the chorus of feathered throats chanting the old oratorio of life and love. Again Gaston and Sallie were jogging along the shady river road they had travelled on the first day she had taken him driving.

“Do you remember this road?” she asked.

“I ’ll never forget it. Along this road we hurried in the twilight to face your angry mother, and just one kiss smoothed her brow into a welcoming smile for me.”

“Well, I’m going to risk greater trouble to-day, and take you a mile or two further up the river to the old mill site at the rapids. It’s the most beautiful and romantic spot in the country. The river spreads out a quarter of a mile in width, and goes plunging and dashing down the rapids through thousands of projecting rocks, a mass of white foam as far as you can see. It’s full of tiny green islands with feras and rhododendron and wild grape vines, and their perfume sweetens the air for miles along the water. These little islands, some ten feet square, some an acre, are full of mocking-birds nesting there, though since the mills were burned during the war nobody has lived near. The songs of these birds seem tuned to the music of the river.”

“It must be a glimpse of fairy-land!” he exclaimed.

“I know you will be thrilled with its romantic beauty. It’s five miles from a house in any direction.”

Gaston was silent. He made a resolution in his soul that he would never leave that spot until he knew his fate. His heart began to thump now like a sledge-hammer. He looked down furtively at her and tried to imagine how she would look and what she would say when he should startle her first with some word of tender endearment or the sound of her name he had said over and over a thousand times in his heart, and aloud when alone, but never dared to use without its prefix.

She saw his abstraction and divined intuitively the current of emotions with which he was struggling, but pretended not to notice it. He tied the horse at the old mill, and they walked slowly down the bank of the river.

“That is my island,” she cried pointing out into the river. “That third one in the group running out from the point. We can step from one rock to another to it.”

It was indeed an entrancing spot. The island seemed all alone in the middle of the river when one was on it. It was not more than fifty feet wide and a hundred feet long, its length lying with the swift current. At the lower end of it a fine ash tree spread its dense shade, hanging far over the still waters that stood in smooth eddy at its roots. On the upper side of this tree lay a big boulder resting against its trunk and embedded in a mass of clean white sand the water had filtered and washed and thrown there on some spring flood.

She climbed on this rock, sat down, and leaned her bare head against its trunk.

“This is my throne,” she laughingly cried.



0300

He leaned against the rock and looked up at her with eyes through which the yearning, the hunger, the joy, and the fear of all life were quivering. What a picture she made under the dark cool shadows! Her dress was again of spotless white that seemed now to have been woven out of the foam of the river. Her throat was bare, her cheeks flushed, and her wavy hair the wind had blown loose into a hundred stray ringlets about her face and neck. Her lips were trembling with a smile at his speechless admiration.

“You seem to have been struck dumb,” she said. “Isn’t this glorious?”

“Beyond words, Miss Sallie. I didn’t know there was such a spot on the earth.”

“This is my favourite perch. Art and wealth could never make anything like this! I could come here and sit and dream all day alone if Mama would let me.”

He tried to begin the story of his love, but every time his tongue refused to move. He was trembling with nervous hesitation and began to dig a hole in the sand with his heel.

“What is the matter with you to-day? I never saw you so serious and moody.”

Just then a female mocking-bird in her modest dove-coloured dress lit on a swaying limb whose tips touched the still water of the eddy at their feet, and her proud mate with head erect, far up on the topmost twig of the ash struck softly the first note of his immortal love poem, the dropping song.

“Listen, he’s going to sing his dropping song!” he cried in a whisper.

And they listened. He sang his first stanza in a low dreamy voice, and then as the sweetness of his love and the glory of his triumph grew on his bird soul, he lifted his clear notes higher and higher until the woods on the banks of the river rang with its melody.

His mate turned her eyes upward and quietly twittered a sweet little answer.

His response rang like a silver trumpet far up in the sky! He sprang ten feet into the air and slowly dropped singing, singing his long trilling notes of melting sweetness. He stopped on the topmost twig, sat a moment, never ceasing his matchless song, and then began to fall downward from limb to limb toward his mate, pouring out his soul in mad abandonment of joy, but growing softer, sweeter, more tender as he drew nearer. They could see her tremble now with pride and love at his approach, as she glanced timidly upward, and answered him with maiden modesty. At last when he reached her side, his song was so low and sweet and dream-like it could scarcely be heard. He touched the tip of her beak with a bird kiss, they chirped, and flew away to the woods together.

Gaston determined to speak or die. His eyes were wet with unshed tears, and he was trembling from head to foot. He had meant to pour out his love for her like that bird in words of passionate beauty, but all he could do was to say with stammering voice low and tense with emotion, “Miss Sallie, I love you!”

He had meant to say “Sallie,” but at the last gasp of breath, as he spoke, his courage had failed. He did not look up at first. And when she was silent, he timidly looked up, fearing to hear the answer or read it in her face. She smiled at him and broke into a low peal of joyous laughter! And there was a note of joy in her laughter that was contagious.

“Please don’t laugh at me,” he stammered, smiling himself.

She buried her face in her hands and laughed again. She looked at him with her great blue eyes wide open, dancing with fun, and wet with tears.

“Do you know, it’s the funniest thing in the world, you are the sixth man who has made love to me on this rock within a year!” and again she laughed in his face.

“Look here, Miss Sallie, this is cruel!”

“Dear old rock. It’s enchanted. It never fails!” and she laughed softly again, and patted the rock with her hand.

“Surely you have tortured me long enough. Have some pity.”

“It is a pitiable sight to see a big eloquent man stammer and do silly things isn’t it?”

“Please give me your answer,” he cried still trembling.

“Oh! it’s not so serious as all that!” she said with dancing eyes.

“I’m in the dust at your feet.”

“You mean in the sand. Did you know that you dug a hole in that sand deep enough to bury me in? I thought once you were meditating murder by the expression on your face.”

“Please give me one earnest look from your eyes,” he pleaded.

“You’re a terrible disappointment,” she answered leaning back and putting her hands behind her head thoughtfully.

His heart stood still at this unexpected speech.

“How?” he slowly asked, looking down at the sand again.

“Because,” she said in her old tantalising tone, “I expected so much of you.”

“Then you don’t class me with the other poor devils at least?” he asked hopefully.

“No, no, they were handsome boys and made me beautiful speeches. But you are distinguished. You are a man that everybody would look at twice in a crowd. You are a famous young orator who can hold thousands breathless with eloquence. I thought you would make me the most beautiful speech. But you acted like a school boy, stammered, looked foolish, and pawed a hole in the ground!” Again she laughed.

“I confess, Miss Sallie, I was never so overwhelmed with terror and nervousness by an audience before.”

“And just one girl to hear!”

“Yes, but she counts more with me than all the other millions, and one kind look from her eyes I would hold dearer at this moment than a conquered world’s applause.”

“That’s fine! That’s something like it. Say more!” she cried.

His face clouded and he looked earnestly at her.

“Come, come, Miss Sallie, this is too cruel. I have torn my heart’s deepest secrets open to you, and tremblingly laid my life at your feet, and you are laughing at me. I have paid you the highest homage one human soul can offer another. Surely I deserve better than this?”

“There, you do. Forgive me. I have seen so much shallow love making, I am never quite sure a boy’s in dead earnest.” She spoke now with seriousness.

“You cannot doubt my earnestness. I have spoken to you this morning the first words of love that ever passed my lips. One chamber of my soul has always been sacred. It was the throne room of Love, reserved for the One Woman waiting for me somewhere whom I should find. I would not allow an angel to enter it, and I hid it from the face of God. I have opened it this morning. It is yours.”

She softly slipped her hand in his, and tremblingly said, while a tear stole down her cheek, “I do love you!”

He bent over her hand and kissed it, and kissed it, while his frame shook with uncontrollable emotion. Then looking up through his dimmed eyes, he said, “My darling, that was the sweetest music, that sentence, that I shall ever hear in this world or in all the worlds beyond it in eternity!”

“When did you first begin to love me?” she asked.

“I don’t know. But I loved you the first moment you looked into my face while I was speaking that day. And I recognised you instantly as the Dream of my Soul. I have loved you for ever, ages before we were born in this world, somewhere, our souls met and knew and loved. And I’ve been looking for you ever since. When I saw you there in the crowd that day looking up at me with those beautiful blue eyes, I felt like shouting ‘I have found her! I have found her!’ and rushing to your side lest I should not see you again.”

“It is strange—this feeling that we have known each other forever. The moment you touched my hand that first day, a sense of perfect content and joy in living came over me. I couldn’t remember the time when I hadn’t known you. You seemed so much a part of my inmost thoughts and every day life. I laughed this morning from sheer madness of joy when you told me your love. I knew you were going to tell me to-day. You tried yesterday, but I held you back. I wanted you to tell me here at this beautiful spot, that the music of this water might always sing its chorus with the memory of your words.”

“Let me kiss your lips once!” he pleaded.

“No, you shall hold my hand and kiss that. Your touch thrills every nerve of my being like wine. It is enough. I promised Mama I would never allow a man to kiss me without asking her. And we are like loving comrades. I couldn’t violate a promise to her. I will, when she says so.”

“Then I ’ll ask her. I know she’s on my side.”

“Yes, I believe she loves you because I do.”

“What did you whisper to her that night, when we came late, and you said she would be angry?”

“Told her I loved you.”

“If I could only have caught that whisper then! You don’t know how it delights me to think your mother likes me. I couldn’t help loving her. It seems to me a divine seal on our lives.”

“Yes, and what specially delights me is, you have completely captured Papa, and he’s so hard to please.”

“You don’t say so!”

“Yes, he’s been preaching you at me ever since you came the first time. I pretended to be indifferent to draw him out. He would say, ‘Now Sallie, there’s a man for you,—no pretty dude, but a man, with a kingly eye and a big brain. That’s the kind of a man who does things in the world and makes history for smaller men to read.’ And then I’d say just to aggravate him, ‘But Papa he’s as poor as Job’s turkey!’”

“Then you ought to have heard him, ‘Well, what of it! You can begin in a cabin like your mother and I did. He’s got a better start than I had, for he has a better training.’”

“I am certainly glad to hear that!” Gaston cried with elation.

“You may be. For Papa is a man of such intense likes and dislikes. The first thing that made my heart flutter with fear was that he might not like you. He loves me intensely. And I love him devotedly. I could not marry without his consent. You are so entirely different from any other beau I ever had, I couldn’t imagine what Papa would think of you. You wear such a serious face, never go into society, care nothing for fine clothes, and are so careless that you even hung your feet out of the buggy that first day I took you to drive. I was glad to have you in the woods and not in town. The boys would have guyed me to death. In fact you are the contradiction of the average man I have known, and of all the men I thought as a girl I’d marry some day. I am so glad Papa likes you.”

That evening when they reached the house, she hurried through the hall to her mother who was standing on the back porch. There was the sudden swish of a dress, a kiss, another! and another! And then the low murmur of a mother’s voice like the crooning over a baby.