XVIII
COLONEL ROYALL and Diana drove into town in the morning; it was a long drive from Eshcol, and the road led past Paradise Ridge. Diana, from her side of the carriage, noticed the little cabin where Jean Bartlett had died, and saw the shambling figure of Zeb leaning against the door-post. Zeb was talking to a well-dressed man whose back was toward her. A low-growing horse-chestnut partly hid his figure, but afterwards she remembered a curious familiarity about it. At the time her heart was bitter. She had heard nothing but Mrs. Eaton’s version of the scandal of Paradise Ridge for a month, and once, when she drove past the Cross-Roads, she had seen Sammy’s chubby figure sprawling under the trees beside Caleb Trench’s office.
If he were the child’s father, he had certainly taken up the burden squarely. Diana pushed all thought of it out of her mind by main force, yet two hours later it would come back. She remembered, too, that meeting on the trail, and her heart quaked. In some mysterious, unfathomable way the man loomed up before her and mastered her will; she could not cast him out, and she stormed against him and againstherself. Outwardly she was listening to Colonel Royall. At heart, too, she was deeply concerned about her father; the colonel was failing, he had been failing ever since spring set in. All her life Diana had felt that, in spite of their devotion to each other, there was a door shut between them, she had never had his full confidence. Yet, she could not tell how she knew this, what delicate intuition revealed the fact of his reticence. She had twice asked Dr. Cheyney what secret trouble her father had, and the old man had looked guilty, even when he denied all knowledge. Diana felt the presence of grief, and she had assumed that it was especially poignant at the season when he kept the anniversary of his wife’s death. Yet, lately, she wondered that he had never taken her to her mother’s grave. Mrs. Royall had died when Diana was three years old, and was buried in Virginia. More than this Diana had never known, but she did know that her room at Broad Acres had been locked the day of her death and that no one ever went there except her father and the old negro woman who kept it spotless and “just as Miss Letty left it.�
Neither Colonel Royall nor old Judy ever vouchsafed any explanation of this room, its quaintly beautiful furniture and the apparently unchanging spotlessness of the muslin curtains and the white valance of the mahogany four-poster. Once, when she was a child, Diana had crept in there and hidden under the bed, but hearing the key turn in the lockwhen old Judy left the room, her small heart had quaked with fear and she had remained crouching in a corner, still under the bed, not daring to look out lest she should indeed see a beautiful and ghostly lady seated at the polished toilet-table, or hear her step upon the floor. She stayed there three hours, then terror and loneliness prevailed and she fancied she did hear something; it was, perhaps, the rustle of wings, for she had been told that angels had wings, and if her mamma were dead she was, of course, an angel. The rustle, therefore, of imaginary wings was more than Diana could bear, and she lifted up her voice and wept. They had been searching the house for her, and it was her father who drew her out from under the bed and carried her, weeping, to the nursery. Then he spoke briefly but terribly to the mammy in charge, and Diana never crept under the white valance again.
She remembered that scene to-day as the carriage drove on under the tall shade trees, and she remembered that Colonel Royall had never looked so ill at this time of the year since the time when he was stricken with fever in midsummer, when she was barely fifteen. Then he had been out of his head for three days and she had heard him call some one “Letty!� and then cry out: “God forgive me—there is the child!� He had been eighteen months recovering, and she saw presages of illness in his face; his eyes were resting sadly and absently, too, on the familiar landscape. Diana winced, againconscious of the shut door. It is hard to wait on at the threshold of the heart we love.
They were crossing the bridge when a long silence was broken. Below them some negroes were chanting in a flatboat, and their voices were beautiful.
“Away down South in de fields of cotton,Cinnamon seed and sandy bottom,Look away, look away,Look away, look away!�
“Away down South in de fields of cotton,Cinnamon seed and sandy bottom,Look away, look away,Look away, look away!�
“Away down South in de fields of cotton,
Cinnamon seed and sandy bottom,
Look away, look away,
Look away, look away!�
“Pa,� said Diana suddenly, “do you believe in the verdict?�
The colonel took off his hat and pushed back his thick white hair. “I reckon I’ve got to, Di,� he replied reluctantly.
“Then you think Jacob is a bully and a fraud,� said Diana, with the unsparing frankness of youth.
“Heaven forbid!� said the colonel gently.
“I thought you wanted me to marry him,� she pursued, victory in her eye.
The colonel reddened. “Diana,� he said, “I don’t want you to marry anybody.�
She smiled. “Thank you,� she said; “after all, the verdict has done some good in this State, Colonel Royall.�
They were at the court-house door now, and there was a crowd in the square. The colonel got down and helped out Diana, and they walked into the arched entrance of the basement together. “I didn’t want to leave you out there to be stared at by that mob,� said the colonel; “people seem to know us at a glance.�
Diana laughed softly. “Of course no one would remember you,� she said maliciously; “they’re looking at my new hat.�
“I reckon they are,� said her father dryly; “we’ll have to find a place to hide it in.�
As he spoke they passed the last doorkeeper, and walked down the stone-paved corridor toward the elevator. It was absolutely still. On the left hand was a small room with one large window looking out into the court where a tree of heaven was growing. It had sprung from a seed and no one had cut it down. The window was barred, but the cool air of the court came in, for the sash was open. It was a room that they called “the cage,� because prisoners waited there to be summoned to the court-room to hear the verdict, but Colonel Royall did not know this. There were a narrow lounge in it, two chairs and a table.
“Wait here,� he said to Diana, “I shan’t be ten minutes. I want to see Judge Ladd, and I know where he is up-stairs. Court has adjourned for luncheon, and you won’t be disturbed.�
Diana went in obediently and sat down in the chair by the window. She could see nothing but the court enclosed on four sides by the old brick building, and shaded in the centre by the slender tree of heaven. There was no possible view of the street from this room. Opposite the door was the blank wall of the hall; on the other side of that wall were the rooms of the Registrar of Wills and the Probate Court. Outside the door a spiral iron staircase ascended tothe offices of the State’s attorney; around the corner was the elevator and to this Colonel Royall went.
Diana leaned back in her chair and surveyed the chill little room; on the walls were written various reflections of waiting prisoners. None were as eloquent as Sir Walter Raleigh’s message to the world, but several meant the same thing in less heroic English. The colonel had been gone ten minutes, and his daughter was watching the branches of the tree as they stirred slightly, as if touched by some tremulous breath, for no wind could reach them here.
It was then that she heard a quick step in the corridor and knew it intuitively. She was not surprised when Caleb Trench stopped involuntarily at the door. They had scarcely met in two months, but the color rushed into her face; she seemed to see him again in the spring woods, though now the hedgerows were showing goldenrod. Involuntarily, too, she rose and they stood facing each other. She tried to speak naturally, but nothing but a platitude came to her lips.
“I congratulate you,� she said foolishly, “on your victory.�
“Miss Royall, I am sorry that everything I do seems like a personal attack upon your people,� he replied at once, and he had never appeared to better advantage; “like the spiteful revenge of a foolish duellist, a sensational politician. Will you do me the justice to believe that my position is painful?�
Diana looked at him and hated herself because her breath came so short; was she afraid of him? Perishthe thought! “I always try to be just,� she began with dignity, and then finished lamely, “of course we are a prejudiced people at Eshcol.�
“You are like people everywhere,� he replied; “we all have our prejudices. I wish mine were less. There is one thing I would like to say to you, Miss Royall—� He stopped abruptly, and raised his head. Their eyes met, and Diana knew that he was thinking of Jean Bartlett; she turned crimson.
There was a long silence.
“I shall not say it,� he said, and his strong face saddened. What right had he to thrust his confidence upon her? “You are waiting for your father?� he added; “may I not escort you to another room? This—is not suitable.� He wanted to add that he was amazed at the colonel for leaving her there; he did not yet fully understand the old man’s simplicity.
“I prefer to stay here,� Diana replied, a little coldly; “my father knows I am here.�
It was Caleb’s turn to color. “I beg your pardon.� He stopped again, and then turned and looked out of the window. “I fear I have lost even your friendship now,� he said bitterly.
She did not reply at once; she was trying to discipline herself, and in the pause both heard the great clock in the tower strike one.
“On the contrary, I thank you for offering to find me a pleasanter place to wait in,� Diana said, with an effort at lightness. “It is a little dreary, but I’m sure my father must be coming and—�
She stopped with a little cry of surprise, for there was suddenly the sharp sound of a pistol shot, followed instantly by a second. The reports came from the other side of the hall, and were followed by a tumult in the street.
“What can it be?� she cried, in sudden terror for her father.
Caleb Trench swung around from the window with an awakening of every sense that made him seem a tremendous vital force. He divined a tragedy. Afterwards the girl remembered his face and was amazed at the fact that she had obeyed him like a child.
“Wait here!� he exclaimed, “your father is safe. I will see what it is. On no account leave this room now—promise me!�
She faltered. “I promise,� she said, and he was gone.
It seemed five minutes; it was in reality only ten seconds since the shots were fired. Meanwhile, there was a tumult without, the shouting of men and the rush of many feet. Diana stood still, trembling, her hands clasped tightly together. Even afar off the voice of the mob is a fearsome thing.