VIII
BEFORE Sunday Caleb’s settlement of his first case was celebrated in Eshcol. Judge Hollis got the facts from Juniper and spread the story abroad. It was too good to keep. The cockerel was valued at three dollars, being rare, and the pullets cost seventy-five cents each. The attorney for the defendant had paid the costs without pleading the case at the bar.
The judge asked if he intended to settle all difficulties on the same plane? If so, he could send him enough clients to form a line down the Mississippi from St. Louis to New Orleans. Juniper was telling it too, without grasping the judge’s point of view. As a lawyer, Juniper claimed that Caleb Trench could out-Herod Herod. He protested that the mere paying for the fowls had saved Lysander from being tarred and feathered; for Aaron Todd’s indignant threats were magnified by memory, and no one but Mr. Trench would have thought of so simple and efficacious a remedy.
The settlement of Lysander’s difficulties coming after the famed Cresset speech created a sensation between wrath and merriment among Caleb’s political opponents. What manner of man was he? CalebTrench, Quaker, posted on his door might have explained him to some, but to the majority it would have remained Greek. Besides, Caleb was not orthodox; he had always leaned to his mother’s religion, and she had been an Episcopalian; between the two creeds he had found no middle course, but he had a profound respect for the faith that brought Diana to her knees with the simplicity of a child in the little old gray stone church where the new curate had installed a boy choir.
It was long past church time, and after the early Sunday dinner, when he sat on the porch with Colonel Royall at Broad Acres. The colonel was a delightful host, and this time he did not discuss politics; he talked, instead, about his father’s plantation in Virginia before the war, a subject as safe as the Satires of Horace, yet Trench fidgeted a little in his chair. He was conscious that Diana was passing through the hall behind him, and that, after her first correctly courteous greeting, she had avoided the piazza. He was, in fact, distinctly the colonel’s guest.
Diana was more vividly aware of social distinctions than her father, and less forgetful of them; she was only twenty-three, and the time was not yet when she could forgive a man for doing anything and everything to earn his bread. There were so many ways, she thought, that did not embrace the village yardstick! Besides, she rather resented the Cresset speech. Jacob Eaton was her cousin, three times removed it was true, but still her cousin, andthat held. Diana could not reconcile herself to the freedom of political attacks, and Caleb Trench’s cool, unbiased criticisms of Eaton and his methods seemed to her to be mere personalities, and she had gone as far as quarreling with the colonel for asking him to call.
“I don’t like his attack on Jacob, pa,� she had said hotly; “he’s no gentleman to make it!�
The colonel meditated, his eyes twinkling. “He’s a good deal of a man though, Di.�
And Diana had turned crimson, though she did not know why, unless she remembered suddenly her own impression of him in his little office, when the flare of the burning wood fell on his face. All these things made her angry and she had received him with an air that reminded Trench of the receipt for six cents, yet Diana was superbly courteous. Neither Mrs. Eaton nor Jacob appeared; they lived about three miles away, and Mrs. Eaton had refused absolutely to visit Cousin David on Sunday if he intended to entertain the lower classes. She had only a very nebulous idea of the political situation, but she thought that Trench had vilified Jacob.
But with the colonel Caleb was happily at home; even the colonel’s slow drawl was music in his ears, and he liked the man, the repose of his manner, the kindly glance of his sad eyes, for his eyes were sad and tender as a woman’s. Yet Colonel Royall had shot a man for a just cause thirty years before, and it was known that he carried and could use his revolverstill. The fire of the old-time gentleman sometimes sent the quick blood up under his skin and kindled his glance, but his slow courtesy made him ever mindful of others. Sitting together, with the sun slanting across the lawns and the arch of the horse-chestnuts shadowing the driveway, Caleb told the colonel the story of his father’s failure and, more lightly, something of his own struggles. Then he got down to reading law with Judge Hollis.
“A pretty costly business for you, sir,� the colonel said wickedly, and then laughed until the blue veins stood out on his forehead.
Caleb laughed too, but colored a little. “Juniper is an old rogue,� he said amusedly. “I should have bribed him to hold his tongue.�
Colonel Royall straightened his face and rubbed his eyeglasses on a dollar bill, which, he held, was the only way to clean them. “Lysander is the rogue,� he said, “and old Aunt Charity has been known to steal Juniper’s clothes for him to wear. She dressed him in Juniper’s best last year and sent him to the fair with all the money from her washing. Meanwhile the old man had nothing but his blue jeans and a cotton undershirt, and wanted to go to the fair, too. There was a great row. Of course Lysander got drunk and was sent up for thirty days in Juniper’s Sunday clothes. Lordy!� the colonel laughed heartily, “you could hear the noise down at the embankment. Juniper wanted a ‘divorcement’ and his clothes, principally his clothes. Judge Hollis and Ihad to fit him out, but he and Aunt Charity didn’t speak until there was another funeral; that brings niggers together every time; there’s a chaste joy about a funeral that melts their hearts.�
The colonel laughed again reminiscently, but Caleb, being a young man and human, was aware that Diana had crossed the hall again, and that she must have heard her father laughing at him. It was not long after this that he made his adieux, and he did not ask to see Miss Royall. The colonel walked with him to the gate and pointed out the magnificent promise of grapes on his vines.
“It will be a plentiful season, Mr. Trench,� he said, “and I hope a good harvest; let us have peace.�
Caleb understood the tentative appeal, and he liked the old man, but to a nature like Trench’s truth is the sling of David; he must smite Goliath. “Colonel Royall,� he said, “no man desires peace more than I do, but—peace with honor.�
Colonel Royall stood in the center of his own gateway, his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, his white head bare. “Mr. Trench,� he said, “I understand that we are not to have peace.�
Thursday night Kitty Broughton gave her ball. Her father was dead, and Judge Hollis stood beside her mother to help Kitty receive her guests. Everybody who was anybody in the city came out, and all Eshcol was there. Mrs. Eaton declared that it was the most mixed affair she ever saw, when she recognized Caleb Trench. She told all her friends not toallow any presuming person to present him to her, and in an hour she had made all the guests painfully aware that there was a black sheep in the fold. Then Kitty Broughton added fuel to the fire by dancing the first dance with him, and it was discovered, by all the girls present, that he danced exceedingly well, and quite as if he had always gone to entertainments. This surprised those who criticized Mrs. Broughton for asking him; yet not to have had him would have been to have the banquet without the salt. For Jacob Eaton was there, too, and though he wore an inscrutable face, it was exciting to wonder how he felt, and what would happen if they met?
Meanwhile, the dancing went on, and Mrs. Broughton had presented Trench to several of the young girls from the city, who admired his dancing, so he had partners; but he was aware of the frigidity of the atmosphere and he had not asked Miss Royall to dance. Instead, Diana had danced twice with her cousin and once with young Jack Cheyney, a nephew of the doctor. She was very beautiful. Trench looked across the ballroom at her and thought that no sculptured figure of nymph or dryad had ever excelled the beauty of her tall young figure, its slender but perfect lines, and the proud pose of her head. She wore a white brocade flowered with pink, like apple-blossoms, and Trench thought of her and the spring buds in his lonely office. The splendid diamond that shone like a star above her forehead reminded him of the wide divergence in their fates.
Judge Hollis found him and laid a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “Glad to see you out, Caleb,� he said heartily; “a change will do you good. Mouldy old law-books and old men pall on a young fellow like you. I saw you lead off with Kitty. The minx is pretty and dances well. Have you asked Diana to dance?�
“No,� said Trench; “Miss Royall has too many partners to accept another, I fancy.�
“Better ask her,� counseled the judge; “the lady is something of a tyrant. Don’t get on her black books too early, sir; besides, courtesy demands it. Didn’t she accept your care and hospitality?�
“She had to,� said Trench dryly.
“Precisely,� smiled the judge; “now ask her to dance and give her the chance to say ‘no,’ then she’ll forgive you.�
“I fancy there are more things to forgive than that,� replied Caleb musingly; “Mrs. Eaton has let me feel the weight of my social position.�
“My dear boy, Jinny is the biggest cad in the world,� said the judge, drinking a glass of punch; “go and do as I tell you or I’ll drop your acquaintance. By the way, Caleb, how much are cockerels now?� and the old man’s laughter drew all eyes.
But it was after supper that, very much against his determinations, Caleb found himself asking Diana to dance. He has never known how it happened, unless it was the compelling power of her beauty inthe corner of the ballroom when the music began again.
“May I have the honor?� he asked.
Diana hesitated the twentieth part of a second; it was almost imperceptible, but it sent the blood to the young man’s forehead. Then she smiled graciously. “With pleasure,� she said in a clear voice.
It happened that they swept past Eaton, her skirt brushing against him, and in another moment they were going down the old ballroom together. All eyes followed them and returned to Jacob Eaton, who was standing discomfited for an instant. It was only one instant; the next Jacob was more suave and smiling than ever, and an heiress from Lexington danced with him. However, in that one instant, his face had startled the groups nearest him. People suddenly remembered that it was said that Eaton carried firearms at all times, and was one of the straightest shots that side of the Mississippi.
Later, when Diana was driving home with her father, she spoke her mind. “I wish you’d make Jacob Eaton behave himself, pa,� she said; “he acts as if I belonged to him and he could choose my—my friends! I don’t like his manners up at Broad Acres, either; he said the other day that the cold grapery should be pulled down, and that he didn’t believe in owning a race-horse.�
Colonel Royall rubbed the back of his head thoughtfully; his eyes were troubled.
“His manners are becoming insufferable,� Diana went on, without heeding the silence.
“If he’s rude to you, Diana,� the colonel said quietly, “just say so and I’ll thrash him.�
“I sometimes wish you would!� she retorted wrathfully, and then, reaching up in the dim carriage, she patted the colonel’s cheek. “You’re an old dear,� she said fondly, “but you do get imposed on, and Jacob never does!�