9115
T looked as if Dole thought he could get down to the matter better out of the pulpit, so he descended the steps on the side near Abner, and stood on the floor inside the altar railing.
“We didn't assemble heer to argue with brother Daniel,” he informed the congregation, “fer that's evidently jest what he'd like. It would be raily kind of you all to consider what he's jest said as the product of a weak brain ruther 'n a bad heart. Brother Throgmartin, have you any other charges to prefer agin brother Daniel?” Dole looked as if he had already been apprised of the extent of the witness's testimony.
“That's all I keer to say,” replied the man addressed, and he coughed.
Dole consulted the scrap of paper in his hand, and while he did so Abner stole a glance at Bishop and his wife. Mrs. Bishop had her handkerchief to her eyes as if she were crying, and her husband's face wore the impatient look of a man detained by trivialities.
“Brother Daniel,” the preacher began, suddenly, “charges has been preferred agin you on the score that you are a profane man. What have you got to say on that line?”
Abner bent his head and spat down into the hopper-shaped box in the aisle.
“I hardly know, brother Dole,” he said. “It's all owin' to what profanity is an' what it hain't. I don't know that I ever used but one word out o' the general run, an' that is 'dem.' I don't believe thar's any more harm in sayin' 'dem' than 'scat,' ur gruntin' when thar's no absolute call fer it. I don't know as anybody knows what it means. I don't. I've axed a number o' times, but nobody could tell me, so I knowed it wasn't patented anyway. Fer a long time I 'lowed nobody used it but me. I met a feller from up in Yankeedom that said 'darn,' an' another from out West that said 'dang,' so I reckon they are all three in a bunch.”
At this juncture some one in the rear of the church laughed out, and the entire congregation turned its head. It was Pole Baker. He was red in the face, had his big hand pressed tightly over his mouth, and was bent over the bench towards the open doorway. Abner's eyes sparkled with appreciative merriment as he saw him, but he did not permit himself to smile. Dole could not hide his irritation, for Pole's unalloyed enjoyment had communicated itself to some of the less rigid members, and he felt that the reply which was stinging his tongue would fall less forcefully than if the incident hadn't happened.
He held up his hand to invoke silence and respect. “I believe such a word, to say the least, is unbecoming in a Christian, and I think the membership will back me up in it.”
“I don't look at it that away,” argued Abner. “I'd be above takin' the Lord's name in vain, but a little word that nobody cayn't find no fault with or tell its origin shorely is different.”
“Well, that 'll be a matter to decide by vote.”
Dole paused a moment and then introduced another topic.
“A report has gone round among the members that you said that red-handed murderer who killed a man over in Fannin' an' was hung, an' passed on without a single prayer fer pardon to his Maker—that he'd stand a chance fer redemption. In all my experience I've never heerd sech a dangerous doctrin' as that, brother Daniel—never, as I myself hope to be redeemed.”
“I said he'd have a chance—Ithought,” said Abner. “I reckon I must 'a' got that idee from what Jesus said to the thief on the cross. You see, brother Dole, I believe the Almighty gives us all equal chances, an' I don't believe that feller in Fannin' had as good a opportunity to git his heart saftened as the feller did that was dyin' right alongside o' the great Redeemer o' the world. Nobody spoke a kind word to the Fannin' man; on the contrary, they was hootin' an' spittin' at 'im night an' day, an' they say the man he killed had pestered 'im all his life. Scriptur' says we ort to forgive a man seventy times seven, an' that is four hundred an' ninety. Why they didn't make it even five hundred I never could tell. An' yet you-uns try to make folks believe the Lord that made us, frail as we are an' prone to sin, won't forgive us once ef we happen to die sudden. Shucks! that doctrine won't hold water; it's hide-bound an' won't stretch one bit. It seems to me that the trouble with yore—”
“We haven't time to listen to a speech on the subject,” interrupted the preacher, whose anger was inflamed by hearing Pole Baker sniggering. “If thar is anybody else that has anything to say we'd be glad to hear from 'em.”
Then Mrs. Bishop rose, wiping her eyes. She was pale and deeply agitated. “I jest want to ax you all to be lenient with my pore brother,” she began, her thin voice cracking under its strain. “I've predicted that he'd bring disrepute down on us with his ready tongue an' odd notions. I've tried an' tried to stop 'im, but it didn't do a bit o' good.”
“It's very good of you to speak in his behalf,” said Dole, as she sank back into her seat. “I'm sure the membership will do its duty, sister Bishop.”
Then a little, meanly clad man behind Daniel stood up. It was Jasper Marmaduke, a ne 'er-do-well farmer, who had a large family, few friends, and no earthly possessions. He was greatly excited, and as white as if he were on trial for his life.
“I ain't no member,” he began. “I know I ort to be, but I hain't. I don't know whether a outsider's got a right to chip into this or not, but it seems to me I 'll bu'st wide open ef I don't git up heer an' say as loud as I kin holler that Abner Daniel's the best man I ever seed, knowed, ur heerd tell of.” Tears were on the man's face and his voice shook with emotion. “He's fetched food an' medicine over to my folks an' run after a doctor when all the rest o' humanity had turned the'r backs on us. He made me promise not to cheep it to a soul, but I'm a-goin' to tell it—tell it, ef he never speaks to me agin. I ain't no godly man, an' this thing's makin' me so mad I feel like throwin' rocks!” And with a sob bursting from him, Marmaduke strode from the church with a loud clatter of his untied shoes.
“Good! Good man!” spoke up Pole Baker, impulsively, unconscious of where he was. “Jas', yo're the right stuff.” And then, in the dead silence that followed his ejaculation, Pole realized what he had said and lowered his head in red embarrassment, for Dole's fierce eyes were bearing down on him. The preacher's pent-up wrath burst; he was really more infuriated at the man who had just left the church, but he had to make an example of some one, and Pole had laid himself open to attack.
“This is no place fer rowdies,” he snarled. “That outlaw back thar who has been continually disturbing these proceedings ort to be jailed. He's undertakin' to bring his violations of decency into the very house of God.”
A vast surprise clutched the congregation, who, knowing Pole, scented trouble. And Pole did not disappoint them. With his flabby hat in his brawny grasp, Pole stood up, but his wife, who sat on the women's side across the aisle from him with her three eldest children, stepped to him and drew him back in his seat, sitting by him and whispering imploringly. Dole stared fiercely for a moment, and then, seeing that the disturbance was over, he shrugged his broad shoulders and applied himself to the business in hand.
“Is thar anybody else pro or con that ud like to be heerd?”
It was the widow Pellham, sitting well towards the front, who now rose. “I feel like Jas' Marmaduke does,” she began, falteringly. Her hearers could not see her face, for she wore a black calico sunbonnet, and it was tilted downward. “I believe I 'll be committin' of a grievous sin ef I let my natural back'ard-ness keep me quiet. Abner Daniel was the fust, last, an' only pusson that made me see the true way into God's blessed sunshine out o' the pitch-black darkness that was over me. All of you, especially them livin' nigh me, knowed how I acted when my daughter Mary died. We'd lived together sence she was born, an' after her pa passed away she was all I had. Then God up an' tuck 'er. I tell you it made a devil out'n me. I liter'ly cussed my Maker an' swore revenge agin 'Im. I quit meetin' an' closed my door agin my neighbors. They all tried to show me whar I was wrong, but I wouldn't listen. Some nights I set up from dark till daylight without candle or fire, bemeanin' my God fer the way He'd done me. You remember, brother Dole, that you come a time or two an' prayed an' read, but I didn't budge out'n my cheer an' wouldn't bend a knee. Then that other little preacher, that was learnin' to preach, an' tuck yore place when you went off to bury yore mother—he come an' made a set at me, but every word he said made me wuss. I orderedhimoff the hill, an' told 'im ef he appeared agin I'd set my dog on 'im. I don't know why everybody made me so mad, but they did. The devil had me by the leg, an' was a-drag-gin' me as fast to his hole as a dog kin trot. But one mornin' Abner Daniel come over with that thar devilish twinkle in his eyes that ud make a cow laugh, an' begun to banter me to sell 'im the hay off'n my little neck o' land betwixt the creek an' the road. I kept tellin' 'im I didn't want to sell, but he kept a-com-in' an' a comin', with no end o' fool talk about this un an' that un, tell somehow I got to watchin' fer 'im, but still I wouldn't let nobody else in. Then one day, after I'd refused to sell an' told 'im I'dgive'im the hay, he growed serious an' said, ses he: 'Sister Pellham, I don't want the hay on that patch. I've been deliberately lyin'. I've been comin' over heer as a friend, to try to make you feel better.' Then he set in, an', as God is my highest judge, ef thar 'll be any more speritual talk on t'other shore it 'll be after Abner Daniel gits thar. He jest rolled me about in his hands like a piece o' wheat dough. He showed me what aileded me as plain as I could p'int out the top o' old Bald Mountain to you on a cleer day. He told me, I remember, that in grievin' like I was, I was sinnin' agin the Holy Ghost, an' jest as long as I did it I'd suffer wuss an' wuss as a penalty. He said it was a fight betwixt me an' my Maker an' that I was bound to be worsted. He said that when my Mary come into the world I couldn't tell whar she was from, nur why the Lord had fetched 'er, but I was jest pleased beca'se it suited me to be pleased, but, ses he, when she went back into the great mystery o' God's beautiful plan I wasn't satisfied beca'se it didn't suit me to be. He said it was downright selfishness, that had no part nur parcel in the kingdom o' heaven. He said to me, ses he, 'Sister, ef you 'll jest fer one minute make up yore mind that Mary is in better hands 'an she was in yor'n '—an' you kin bet yore bottom dollar she is—'you 'll feel as light as a feather. 'I had a tussle, but it come, God bless him! it come. It was jest like a great light had bu'sted over me. I fell down on my knees before 'im an' shouted an' shouted till I was as limp as a wet rag. I had always thought I was converted away back in the sixties when I was a gal, but I wasn't. I got my redemption that day under Abner Daniel's talk, an' I shall bless 'im an' sing his name on my dyin' bed. I don't want to entertain no spiteful feelin' s, but ef he goes out I 'll have to. I wouldn't feel right in no church too puore to fellowship with Abner Daniel.”
“Good! Good woman!” shouted Pole Baker, as if he were at a political speaking. She sat down. The house seemed profoundly moved. People were thinking of the good things they had heard about Abner Daniel. However, the turn of affairs did not suit Dole, who showed decided anger. His eyes flashed as they rested on Pole Baker, who had offended him again.
“I shall have to ax that law-breaker back thar to leave the church,” he said. “I think it's come to a purty pass ef strong, able-bodied church-members will set still an' allow the'r own house o' worship to be insulted by such a rascal as that one.”
Pole rose; many thought he was going to leave, but to the surprise of all he walked deliberately up to the altar and laid his hand upon the railing.
“Looky' heer,” he said, “they call you the fightin' preacher. They say you believe in hittin' back when yo' re hit. I'm heer to show you that ef I am a outlaw I ain't afeerd o' you, an' I ain't a-goin' to be abused by you when you are under the cloak o' this meetin'. When you say some 'n' you think is purty good you wink at some brother in the amen-corner an' he yells 'Amen 'loud enough to be heerd to the cross-roads. Then you go on as if nothin' had happened. What I said back thar was jest my way o' sayin' amen. Little Jas' Marmaduke hit you in a weak spot; so did what Mis' Pellham said, an' yo' re tryin' to take yore spite out on me. That won't work. I come heer to see fair play, an' I'm a-goin' to do it. Uncle Ab's a good man an' I'm heer to testify to it. He's come nigher—him an' Alan Bishop, that's a chip off'n 'im—to turn me into the right way than all the shoutin'-bees I ever attended, an' I've been to as many as thar are hairs on my head. I ain't bald, nuther. Now ef you want to have it out with me jest wait an' meet me outside, whar we 'll both have fair play.”
Dole was quivering with rage. “I kin whip a dozen dirty scoundrels like you,” he panted. “Men like you insult ministers, thinking they won't fight, but after meetin' I 'll simply wipe up the ground with you.”
“All right, 'nough said!” and Pole sat down. There was silence for a moment. Dole's furious panting could be heard all over the room. Then Abner Daniel rose. A vast change had come over him. The light of quizzical merriment had faded from his face; nothing lay there except the shadows of deepest regret. “I've been wrong—wrong—wrong!” he said, loudly. “I'm dead wrong, ur Pole Baker never would 'a' wanted to fight, an' brother Dole wouldn't 'a' been driv' to lose his temper in the pulpit. I'm at the bottom o' all this rumpus that has kept you all from listenin' to a good sermon. You've not found me hard to git along with when I see my error, an' I promise that I 'll try from this day on to keep from shovin' my notions on folks that ain't ready fer 'em. I want to stay in the church. I think every sane man an' woman kin do good in a church, an' I want to stay in this un.”
The confession was so unexpected, and furnished Dole with such an easy loop-hole for gracefully retiring from a most unpleasant predicament, that he actually beamed on the speaker.
“I don't think any more need be said,” he smiled. “Brother Daniel has shown himself willing to do the right thing, an' I propose that the charges be dropped.” Thereupon a vote was taken, and it went overwhelmingly in Abner's favor. After the benediction, which followed immediately, Pole Baker hurried across to Daniel. “I declare, you make me sick, Uncle Ab,” he grumbled. “What on earth did you mean by takin' back-water? You had 'im whar the wool was short; he was white at the gills. You could 'a' mauled the life out'n 'im. Ef I'd—”
But Abner, smiling indulgently, had a watchful eye on Dole, and was moving forward to shake the preacher's outstretched hand.
“Well, I 'll be damned!” Pole grunted, half aloud and in high disgust, as he pushed his way through the crowd to the door.
Abner found him waiting for him near the hitch-ing-post, where he had been to untie Bishop's horse.
“I reckon,” he said, “bein' as you got so mighty good yorese'f, 'at you think I acted wrong.”
“Not any wuss'n I did, Pole,” replied the old man, seriously. “My advice to you is to go to Dole an' tell 'im you are sorry.”
“Sorry hell!”
“It ud be better fer you,” half smiled Abner. “Ef you don't, some o' them hill-Billies 'll make a case at court agin you fer disturbin' public worship. Before a grand jury o' mossbacks a man with yore record ud not stand any better chance o' comin' cleer 'n a old bird-nest ud o' makin' good soup. When you was a-runnin' of yore still it made you powerful mad to have revenue men after you, didn't it? Well, this heer shebang is Dole's still, my boy, whar he claims to make good sperits out'n bad material, an' he's got a license, which is more 'n you could 'a' said.”
“I reckon yo' re right,” said Pole. “I 'll wait fer 'im.”
9125
N the middle of the following week some of the young people of Darley gave a picnic at Morley's Spring, a beautiful and picturesque spot about a mile below Bishop's farm. Alan had received an urgent invitation to join the party, and he rode down after dinner.
It was a hot afternoon, and the party of a dozen couples had scattered in all directions in search of cool, shady nooks. Alan was by no means sure that Miss Barclay would be there, but, if the truth must be told, he went solely with the hope of at least getting another look at her. He was more than agreeably surprised, for, just as he had hitched his horse to a hanging bow of an oak near the spring, Frank Hillhouse came from the tangle of wild vines and underbrush on a little hill-side and approached him.
“You are just the fellow I'm looking for,” said Frank. “Miss Dolly's over there in a hammock, and I want to leave somebody with her. Old man Morley promised me the biggest watermelon in his patch if I'd come over for it. I won't be long.”
“Oh, I don't care how long you are,” smiled Alan. “You can stay all day if you want to.”
“I thought you wouldn't mind,” grinned Frank. “I used to think you were the one man I had to fight, but I reckon I was mistaken. A feller in love imagines everybody in creation is against him.”
Alan made no reply to this, but hurried away to where Dolly sat, a new magazine in her hands and a box of candies on the grass at her feet. “I saw you riding down the hill,” she said, with a pretty flush and no little excitement. “To tell the truth, I sent Frank after the melon when I recognized you. He's been threatening to go all the afternoon, but I insisted on it. You may be surprised, but I have a business message for you, and I would have made Frank drive me past your house on the way home if you hadn't come.”
“Business,” Alan laughed, merrily; he felt very happy in her presence under all her assurances of welcome. “The idea of your having a business message! That's really funny.”
“Well, that's what it is; sit down.” She made room for him in the hammock, and he sat beside her, his foolish brain in a whirl. “Why, yes, it is business; and it concerns you. I fancy it is important; anyway, it may take you to town to-night.”
“You don't mean it,” he laughed. She looked very pretty, in her light organdie gown and big rustic hat, with its wide, flowing ribbons.
“Yes, it is a message from Rayburn Miller, about that railroad idea of yours.”
“Really? Then he told you about that?”
“Yes; he was down to see me last week. He didn't seem to think much of it then—but”—she hesitated and smiled, as if over the memory of something amusing—“he's been thinking of it since. As Frank and I drove through the main street this morning—Frank had gone in a store to get a basket of fruit—he came to me on his way to the train for Atlanta. He hadn't time to say much, but he said if you were out here to-day to tell you to come in town to-night without fail, so as to meet him at his office early in the morning. He 'll be back on the midnight train. I asked him if it was about the railroad, and he said it was—that he had discovered something that looked encouraging.”
“I'm glad of that,” said Alan, a thrill of excitement passing over him. “Rayburn threw cold water on my ideas the other day, and—”
“I know he did, and it was a shame,” said Dolly, warmly. “The idea of his thinking he is the only man in Georgia with originality! Anyway, I hope it will come to something.”
“I certainly do,” responded Alan. “It's the only thing I could think of to help my people, and I am willing to stake all I have on it—which is, after all, nothing but time and energy.”
“Well, don't you let him nor any one else discourage you,” said the girl, her eyes flashing. “A man who listens to other people and puts his own ideas aside is unworthy of the brain God gave him. There is another thing”—her voice sank lower and her eyes sought the ground. “Rayburn Miller is a fine, allround man, but he is not perfect by any means. He talks freely to me, you know; he's known me since I was knee-high. Well, he told me—he told me of the talk he had with you at the dance that night. Oh, that hurt me—hurt me!”
“He told you that!” exclaimed Alan, in surprise. “Yes, and it actually disgusted me. Does he think all men ought to act on that sort of advice? He might, for he has made an unnatural man of himself, with all his fancies for new faces; but you are not that kind, Alan, and I'm sorry you and he are so intimate—not that he can influence youmuch, but he has already,in a way, and that has pained me deeply.”
“He has influenced me?” cried Alan, in surprise. “I think you are mistaken.”
“You may not realize it, but he has,” said Dolly, with gentle and yet unyielding earnestness. “You see, you are so very sensitive that it would not be hard to make you believe that a young man ought not to keep on caring for a girl whose parents object to his attentions.”
“Ah!” He had caught her drift.
There was a pause. At the foot of the hill a little brook ran merrily over the water-browned stones, and its monotonous lapping could be heard distinctly. Under the trees across the open some of the couples had drawn together and were singing:
“I see the boat go 'round the bend,
Good-bye, my lover, good-bye.”
Dolly had said exactly what he had never hoped to hear her say, and the fact of her broaching such a subject in such a frank, determined way sent a glow of happiness all over him.
“I don't think,” he began, thoughtfully, “that Rayburn or any man could keep me from”—he looked into her full, expectant eyes, and then plunged madly—“could keep me from caring for you, from loving you with all my heart, Dolly; but it really is a terrible thing to know that you are robbing a girl of not only the love of her parents but her rightful inheritance, when, when”—he hurried on, seeing that an impulse to speak was urging her to protest—“when you haven't a cent to your name, and, moreover, have a black eye from your father's mistakes.”
“I knew that's what he'd said!” declared the girl, almost white with anger. “I knew it! Oh, Alan, Rayburn Miller might be able to draw back and leave a girl at such a time, but no man could that truly loves as—as I believe you love me. I have known how you have felt all this time, and it has nearly broken my heart, but I could not write to you when you had never even told me, what you have to-day. You must not let anybody or anything influence you, Alan. I'd rather be a poor man' s wife, and do my own work, than let a paltry thing like my father's money keep me from standing by the man I love.”
Alan' s face was ablaze. He drew himself up and gazed at her, all his soul in his eyes. “Then I shall not give you up,” he declared; “not for anything in the world. And if there is a chance in the railroad idea I shall work at it ten times as hard, now that I have talked with you.”
They sat together in blissful ignorance of the passage of time, till some one shouted out that Frank Hill-house was coming with the watermelon. Then all the couples in sight or hearing ran to the spring, where Hillhouse could be seen plunging the big melon into the water. Hattie Alexander and Charlie Durant, who had been perched on a jutting bowlder high up on the hill behind Dolly and Alan, came half running, half sliding down, catching at the trees to keep from falling.
“Better come get your teeth in that melon,” Hattie said, with a knowing smile at Dolly. They lived next door to each other and were quite intimate.
“Come on, Alan.” Dolly rose. “Frank will never forgive me if I don't have some.”
“I sha 'n' t have time, if I go to town to-night,” replied Alan. “I have something to do at home first.”
“Then I won't keep you,” Dolly smiled, “for you must go and meet Rayburn Miller. I'm going to hope that he has had good luck in Atlanta.”
The world had never seemed so full of joy and hope as Alan rode homeward. The sun was setting in glorious splendor beyond the towering mountains, above which the sky seemed an ocean of mother-of-pearl and liquid gold. Truly it was good to be alive. At the bars he met Abner Daniel with a fishing-cane in his hands, his bait-gourd under his arm.
“I know right whar you've been,” he said, with a broad smile, as he threw down the bars for Alan to pass through. “I seed that gang drive by in all the'r flurry this mornin', the queen bee in the lead with that little makeshift of a man.”
Alan dismounted to prevent his uncle from putting up the bars, and they walked homeward side by side.
“Yes, and I've had the time of my life,” said the young man. “I talked to her for a solid hour.”
“I could see that in yore face,” said Abner, quietly. “You couldn't hide it, an' I 'll bet she didn't lose time in lettin' you know what she never could hide from me.”
“We understand each other better now,” admitted Alan.
“Well, I've certainly set my heart on the match—on gittin' her in our family,” affirmed Abner. “Durn-ed ef—I declare, sometimes I'm afeerd I'm gone on 'er myse'f. Yes, I want you 'n' her to make it. I want to set an' smoke an' chaw on yore front porch, an' heer her back in the kitchen fryin' ham an' eggs, an',” the old man winked, “I don't know as I'd object to trottin' some 'n' on my knee, to sorter pass the time betwixt meals.”
“Oh, come off, Uncle Ab!” said Alan, with a flush, “that's going too far.”
The old man whisked his bait-gourd round under his other arm. His eyes twinkled, and he chuckled. “'Tain' t goin' as fur as havin' one on each knee an' both pine blank alike an' exactly the same age. I've knowed that to happen in my day an' time, when nobody wasn't even lookin' fer a' increase.”
9131
ATTIE ALEXANDER and Charlie Durant reached home before Dolly and Hillhouse, and as Dolly alighted from the buggy at the front gate and was going up the flower-bordered walk Hattie came to the side fence and called out:
“Oh, Dolly, come here quick; I've got some 'n' to tell you.”
“Well, wait till I get my hat off,” answered Dolly.
“No, I can't wait; come on, or you 'll wish you had.”
“What is it, goosie?” Dolly smiled, as she tripped across the grass, her face flushed from her rapid drive.
“Doll, darling, I've got you in anawfulscrape. I know you 'll never forgive me, but I couldn't help it. When Charlie left me at the gate mother come out and asked me all about the picnic, who was there an' who talked to who, and all about it. Among other things I told her about you and Alan getting together for such a nice, long talk, and—”
“Oh, I don't mind her,” broke in Dolly, as she reached for the skirt of her gown to rescue it from the dew on the high grass.
“Wait, wait; I'm not through by a jugful,” panted Hattie. “Just then your pa came along an' asked if you'd got home. I told him you hadn't, an' then he up and asked me if Alan Bishop was out there. I had to say yes, of course, for you know how strict mother is about telling a fib, and then what do you think he did? He come right out plain and asked if Alan talked to you by yourself. I didn't know what on earth to do. I reckon I actually turned white, and then mother chipped in and said: 'Tell the truth, daughter; a story never mends matters; besides, Colonel Barclay, you must be more reasonable; young folks will be young folks, and Alan Bishop would be my choice if I was picking out a husband for my girl.' And then you ought to have heard your pa snort; it was as loud as a horse kicking up his heels in the lot. He wheeled round an' made for the house like he was shot out of a gun.”
“I reckon he 'll raise the very Old Harry,” opined Dolly, grimly. “But I don't care; he's driven me about as far as he can.”
“I wouldn't make him any madder,” advised the innocent mischief-maker, with a doleful expression. “It's all my fault. I—”
“No, it wasn't,” declared Dolly. “But he can't run over me with his unreasonable ideas about Alan Bishop.”
With that she turned and went towards the house, her head down. On the veranda she met her mother, who was waiting for her with a pleasurable smile. “You've stirred up yore pa awful,” she said, laughing impulsively, and then trying to veil it with a seriousness that sat awkwardly on her. “You'd better dodge him right now. Oh, he's hot! He was just saying this morning that he believed you and Frank were getting on fine, and now he says Frank is an idiot to take a girl to a picnic to meet his rival. How did it happen?”
“Just as I intended it should, mother,” Dolly said. “I knew he was coming, and sent Frank off after a watermelon. He didn't have sense enough to see through my ruse. If I'd treated Alan that way he'd simply have looked straight through me as if I'd been a window-pane. Mother, I'm not going to put up with it. I tell you I won't. I know what there is in Alan Bishop better than father does, and I am not going to stand it.”
“You ain't, heigh?” thundered Barclay across the hall, and he stalked out of the sitting-room, looking over his eye-glasses, a newspaper in his hand. “Now, my lady, let me say to you that Alan Bishop shall never darken my door, and if you meet him again anywhere you shall go away and stay.”
“Father “—Dolly had never stood so tall in her high-heeled shoes nor so straight—“Father, you insulted Alan just now before Mrs. Alexander and Hattie, and I'm not going to have you do it any more. I love him, and I shall never love any other man, nor marry any other man. I know he loves me, and I'm going to stick to him.”
“Then the quicker you get away from here the better,” said the old man, beside himself with rage. “And when you go, don't you dare to come back again.”
The Colonel stalked from the room. Dolly glanced at her mother, who had a pale smile of half-frightened enjoyment on her face.
“I think you said 'most too much,” Mrs. Barclay said. “You'd better not drive him too far.”
Dolly went up to her room, and when supper was called, half an hour later, she declined to come down. However, Mrs. Barclay sent up a tray of delicacies by Aunt Milly, the old colored woman, which came back untouched.
It was the custom of the family to retire rather early at that season of the year, and by half-past nine the house was dark and still. Mrs. Barclay dropped to sleep quickly, but waked about one o' clock, and lay unable to drift into unconsciousness again for the delightful pastime of thinking over her daughter's love affair. She began to wonder if Dolly, too, might not be awake, and the prospect of a midnight chat on that of all topics made her pulse beat quickly. Slipping noiselessly out of bed, so as not to wake her husband, who was snoring in his bed across the room, she glided up-stairs. She had not been there a moment before the Colonel was waked by a low scream from her, and then he heard her bare feet thumping on the floor overhead as she crossed the hall into the other rooms. She screamed out again, and the Colonel sprang up, grasped his revolver, which always lay on the bureau, and ran into the hall. There he met his wife, half sliding down the stairs.
“Dolly's gone,” she gasped. “Her bed hasn't been touched. Oh, Seth, do you reckon anything has happened to her?”
The old man stared in the dim light of the hall, and then turned towards the door which opened on the back veranda. He said not a word, but was breathing hard. The cabin of old Ned and his wife, Aunt Milly, was near by.
“Ned; oh, Ned!” called out the Colonel.
“Yes, marster!”
“Crawl out o' that bed and come heer!”
“Yes, marster; I'm a-comin'.”
“Oh, Seth, do you reckon—do you—?”
“Dry up, will you?” thundered Barclay. “Are you comin', Ned?”
Uncle Ned's gray head was thrust out at the partly open door.
“You want me, marster?”
“Yes; what do you suppose I called you for if I didn't want you. Now I don't want any lies from you. You know you can't fool me. I want to know if you carried a note from this house to anybody since sundown.”
“A note must have been sent,” ventured Mrs. Barclay, in an undertone. “Dolly never would have gone to him. He must have been notified and come after her.”
“Dry up, for God's sake!” yelled the Colonel over his shoulder to the spectre by his side. “Answer me, you black rascal.”
“Marse Seth, young miss, she—”
“She sent a note to Alan Bishop, didn't she?” interpolated the Colonel.
“Marster, I didn't know it was any harm. I des 'lowed it was some prank o' young miss'. Oh, Lordy!”
“You might know you'd do suppen, you old sap-haid,” broke in Aunt Milly from the darkness of the cabin. “I kin count on you ever' time.”
“Get back in bed,” ordered the Colonel, and he walked calmly into his room and lay down again. His wife followed him, standing in the middle of the room.
“Aren't you going to do anything?” she said. Her voice was charged with a blending of tears and a sort of feminine eagerness that is beyond the comprehension of man.
“Do anything? What do you think I ought to do? Raise an alarm, ring the church-bells, and call out the hook-and-ladder company? Huh! She's made her bed; let her lie on it.”
“You are heartless—you have no feeling,” cried his wife. The very core of her desire was to get him to talk about the matter. If he was not going to rouse the neighborhood, and thus furnish some one to talk to, he, at least, ought to be communicative.
“Well, you'd better go to bed,” snarled her husband.
“No”—she scratched a match and lighted a candle—“I'm going up-stairs and see if she left a note. Now, you see,Ihad to think of that. The poor girl may have written something.”
There did seem to be a vestige of reason in this, and the old man said nothing against it, throwing himself back on his pillow with a stifled groan.
After about half an hour Mrs. Barclay came back; she stood over him, holding the candle so that its best rays would fall on his face.
“She didn't write one word,” was her announcement. “I reckon she knew we'd understand or find out from Uncle Ned. And just to think!”—Mrs. Barclay now sat down on a chair across the back of which lay the Colonel's trousers, holding the candle well to the right that she might still see the rigid torture of his face—“just to think, she's only taken the dress she had on at the picnic. It will be a poor wedding for her, when she's always said she wanted a lot of bridesmaids and ushers and decorations. Poor child! Maybe they had to drive into the country to get somebody to marry them. I know brother Lapsley wouldn't do it without letting us know. I reckon she 'll send the first thing in the morning for her trunk, if—” Mrs. Barclay gazed more steadily—“if she don't come herself.”
“Well, she needn't come herself,” grunted the reclining figure as it flounced under the sheets to turn its face to the wall.
“You wouldn't be that hard on our only child, just because she—”
“If you don't go to bed,” the words rebounded from the white plastering an inch from the speaker's lips, “you 'n' me 'll have a row. I've said what I'd do, and I shall do it!”
“Well, I'm going out to speak to Aunt Milly a minute,” said Mrs. Barclay, and, drawing on a thin graywrapper and sliding her bare feet into a pair of slippers, she shuffled out to the back porch.
“Come here, Aunt Milly,” she called out, and she sat down on the highest step and waited till the fat old woman, enveloped in a coarse gray blanket, joined her.
“Aunt Milly, did you ever hear the like?” she said. “She 'ain't made off sho 'nough, have she, Miss Annie?”
“Yes, she's gone an' done it; her pa drove her just a little too far. I reckon she railly does love Alan Bishop, or thinks she does.”
“I could take a stick an' baste the life out'n Ned,” growled the black woman, leaning against the veranda post; she knew better than to sit down in the presence of her mistress, even if her mistress had invited her to talk.
“Oh, he didn't know any better,” said Mrs. Barclay. “He always would trot his legs off for Dolly, and”—Mrs. Barclay's tone was tentative—“it wouldn't surprise me if Alan Bishop paid him to help to-night.”
“No, he didn't help, Miss Annie. Ned's been in bed ever since he come back fum town des atter supper. He tol' me des now dat de young man was in a room at de hotel playin' cyards wid some more boys an' he got up an' writ Miss Dolly er note; but Ned went straight to bed when he got home.”
“Then, Alan must have got her to meet him at the front gate, don't you reckon? He didn't drive up to the house either, for I think I would have heard the wheels. He must have left his turn-out at the corner.”
“Are you a-goin' to set there all night?” thundered the Colonel from his bed. “How do you expect anybody to sleep with that low mumbling going on, like a couple of dogs under the house?”
Mrs. Barclay got up, with a soft, startled giggle.
“He can' t sleep because he's bothered,” she said, in a confidential undertone. “We'd better go in. I don't want to nag him too far; it's going hard with Dolly as it is. I'm curious to see if he really will refuse to let her come back. Do you reckon he will, Milly?”
“I sw'ar I don't know, Miss Annie,” replied the dark human shape from the depths of her blanket. “He sho is a caution, an' you kin see he's tormented. I 'll bet Ned won't have a whole skin in de mornin'.”
The Colonel, despite his sullen effort to conceal the fact from his wide-awake wife, slept very little during the remainder of that night, and when he rose at the usual hour he went out to see his horse fed.
Mrs. Barclay was fluttering from the dining-room to the kitchen, gossiping with the cook, who had run out of anything to say on the subject and could only grunt, “Yes'um, and no'um,” according to the reply she felt was expected. Aunt Milly was taking a plate of waffles into the dining-room when a little negro boy, about five years of age, the son of the cook at the Alexanders', crawled through a hole in the fence between the two houses and sauntered towards the kitchen. On the door-step he espied a black kitten that took his fancy and he caught it and began to stroke it with his little black hand.
“What you wantnow?” Aunt Milly hovered over him like an angry hen. “Want ter borrow suppen, I boun' you; yo'-alls folks is de beatenes' people ter borrow I ever lived alongst.”
The boy seemed to have forgotten his errand in his admiration for the kitten.
“What you atter now?” snarled Aunt Milly, “eggs, flour, sugar, salt, pepper, flat-iron? Huh, we-all ain't keepin' er sto'.”
The boy looked up suddenly and drew his ideas together with a jerk. “Miss Dolly, she say sen 'er Mother Hubbub wrappin' dress, hangin' on de foot er her bed-post.”
“What?” gasped Aunt Milly, and, hearing the exclamation, Mrs. Barclay came to the door and paused to listen.
“Miss Dolly,” repeated the boy, “she say sen 'er 'er wrappin' dress off'n de foot-post er 'er bed; en, en, she say keep 'er two waffles hot en, en dry—not sobby—en ter git 'er dat fresh cream fer 'er coffee in 'er lill pitcher whut she lef' in de ice-box.”
“Dolly? Dolly?” cried Mrs. Barclay. “You are surely mistaken, Pete. Where did you see her?”
“Over 't we-all's house,” said the boy, grabbing the kitten which had slid from his momentarily inattentive fingers.
“Over 't yo'-all's house!” cried Milly, almost in a tone of horror, “en, en is her husban' wid 'er?”
The boy grinned contemptuously.
“Huh, Miss Dolly ain't no married ooman—you know she ain't, huh! I seh, married! Look heer”—to the kitten—“don't you scratch me, boy!”
Mrs. Barclay bent over him greatly excited. “What was she doing over at your house, Pete?”
“Nothin' w'en I seed 'er 'cep'jest her en Miss Hattie lyin' in de bed laughin' en car'yin' on.”
“Oh, Lordy!” Mrs. Barclay's eyes were riveted on Aunt Milly's beaming face, “do you reckon—?”
“She's slep 'over dar many times before now, Miss Annie,” said Aunt Milly, and she burst into a round, ringing laugh, her fat body shaking like a mass of jelly. “She done it time en ergin—time en ergin.”
“Well, ain't that a purty mess?” said Mrs. Barclay, almost in a tone of disappointment. “I 'll get the wrapper, Pete, and you tell her to put it on and hurry over here as soon as she possibly can.”
A few minutes later Dolly came from the Alexander's and met her mother at the gate. “Oh, Dolly,” Mrs. Barclay cried, “you've got us in an awful mess. We missed you about midnight and we thought—your father made Ned acknowledge that he took a note to Alan Bishop from you, and we thought you had gone off to get married. Your father's in an awful temper, swearing you shall never—”
Dolly tossed her head angrily. “Well, you needn't say I got you into it; you did it yourselves and I don't care how much you suffer. I say! When I go to get married it will not be that way, you can depend on it. Now, I reckon, it will be all over town that—”
“No, it needn't get out of the family,” Mrs. Barclay assured her, in a guilty tone of apology. “Your pa wouldn't let me raise any alarm. But youdidsend a note to Alan Bishop, Dolly.”
“Yes, I knew he was in town, and would be here to-day, and I simply wrote him that father was angry at our seeing each other again and that I hoped he would avoid meeting him just now—that was all.”
“Well, well, well.” Mrs. Barclay hurried through the house and out to where Barclay stood at the lot fence watching Ned curry his horse.
“What do you reckon?” she gasped. “Dolly didn't go off at all; she just went to spend the night with Hattie Alexander.”
His face changed its expression against his will; the blood flowed into the pallor and a satisfied gleam shot from his half-closed eyes. He turned from her, looking over the fence at the horse.
“You're leavin' a splotch on that right hind leg,” he said. “Are you stone blind?”
“I was gittin' roun' to it, marster,” said the negro, looking his surprise over such an unexpected reproof. “No; she just wrote Alan that you was displeased at them getting together yesterday and advised him to dodge you to-day while he is in town.”
“Well, he'd better!” said the Colonel, gruffly, as they walked towards the house. “You tell her,” he enjoined—“you tell her what I said when I thought shewasgone. It will be a lesson to her. She can tell now how I 'll do if shedoesgo against me in this matter.”
“I reckon you are glad she didn't run off,” replied his wife thoughtfully. “The Lord only knows what you'd do about writing your letters without her help. I believe she knows more about your business right now than you do, and has a longer head. You'd' a' saved a thousand dollars by taking her advice the other day about that cotton sale.”