Another thing disturbed him, affecting his mind very much as a sudden contact with the supernatural might have done. In Lance's family, which had sprung from England, fragments of an old story were still extant, about an ancestor who had been involved with one of the colonizing expeditions to Virginia. He did not recall every particular of the story, but sundry items of it were quite distinct. It was said that this early predecessor had fallen in love with an Indian girl, from whom he had been cruelly separated; or that he had come to these virgin shores in search of some one whom he had lost: accounts differed as to that. But Lance's belief was, that this long-dead member of his long-dead English family had been in quest of his plighted wife, and that he had somehow missed her, returning to England alone. Virginia, in those days, included the territory of North Carolina—the very place to which Lance had drifted, propelled by a rather vague purpose and a desire for knowledge as well as recreation. There was nothing very remarkable in this, perhaps. The young man himself had not thought much about it; for one does not have time, in the present age, to linger over little coincidences and bits of ancient family gossip. The old tale had once or twice flitted through his mind since his installation at the colonel's manor, but it was not a thing he would have considered worth mentioning.
Nevertheless, because of those occult susceptibilities which I have mentioned, at the moment of encountering this mysterious woman with her face turned seaward, the remembrance flashed up over his mental horizon like a kindling beacon-fire. A marvelling awe took hold of him, and for his life he could not have shaken off the fantasy that made him conceive of her as a projection from the shadowy past, an image that typified the lost mistress, or the forgotten Indian maiden, with whom his ancestor's life-history had been linked. The circumstance that she was gazing eastward also had an effect upon him; he could easily have persuaded himself that she was waiting for her vanished lover to come to her over the waves.
But the fancied resemblance to Jessie—that was the most bewildering element of all. Why should it occur to him? And why should he feel such an unwonted shiver running through his veins?
The simplest way to banish all this nonsense was, doubtless, to go forward and speak to the girl. The good nature of the inhabitants, Lance knew, made such an informality excusable; but, as he was about to try that solution of his perplexity, and find out who this woman really was, the figure began to descend the slope on the farther side from him, and disappeared so noiselessly that she seemed to have crumbled and dropped back into the earth from which she came.
Lance stood still; that curious warm shiver thrilled his veins anew. Then he turned away and resumed his tardy progress toward the distant manor-house, muttering aloud: "How can I be such a fool?"
But the vision, notwithstanding, remained imprinted on his consciousness, and troubled him.
The next morning ushered in Miss Jessie Floyd's birthday anniversary. The emancipated housemaid, ancient Sally, had given Lance timely warning of this occasion, and he had taken the precaution to send to New York for a present which he thought might be acceptable.
The question as to what sort of a gift he should select had been a hard one to decide. If the truth must be told, he had allowed himself the inappropriate but impassioned notion that he would like to give her a ring; inappropriate because he had not yet succeeded in effecting those preliminaries which justify a young man in giving a ring to a young woman; though, except for that, it was exactly what would best have conveyed his sentiments. Just why an ornament for a lady's hand should have this potent significance, when it is her ear that receives the lover's confession, was not perfectly clear to him; yet it was plain that there was no insurmountable objection to his offering Miss Jessie a pair of ear-drops. He therefore ordered some pearl ones, hoping to please her. To please himself, he ordered a ring. But the little packet which lay beside her plate at the breakfast-table, that morning, contained only the ear-drops. The ring was securely locked in Lance's private consciousness and his trunk.
Perhaps in order to appease his own self-reproaches for cherishing this jewelled secret, but also to prevent any embarrassment in Jessie's receiving a costly trifle from him, Lance thought it best to let Colonel Floyd know of his intention beforehand. He did so, late in the evening, after returning from his solitary expedition.
"I hope this will be quite agreeable to you, sir," he ventured, with becoming deference, when he had explained.
The colonel remembered that he himself had once been young, and probably found it easy to gauge the effort it cost his youthful friend to maintain this deference in a case where he was positive that he had an inalienable right to do as he pleased.
"My dear Lance," he replied, "neither my daughter nor myself can need any outward token to assure us of the kindly feeling you entertain toward us. That is the only reason why I might regret that you have decided to offer one. A simple congratulation or good wishes would have been enough, I assure you; but I appreciate your thoughtfulness, and Jessie, I am sure, will be delighted."
"Thank you, colonel. Then it is all right," said Lance, decisively, feeling as if he had just snapped the cover tight over the pearls and rescued them from loss.
They were sitting in the room which the colonel, with innocent grandeur, called his library, surrounded with a few editions of English and Latin classics, flanked by rows of obsolete works largely relating to politics; and they were engaged in the unscholarly pastime of sipping whiskey and water. It may be that the beverage had softened the colonel into a pensive mood.
"Speaking of congratulations," he said, "these anniversaries begin to make me think that my Jessie perhaps hasn't got so much to be congratulated for."
"I think she has a great deal," said his guest, with some fervor. "More than I have, at any rate. She still has her father—" his listener smiled sedately—"she has her old home, and—and herself!"
Lance had not known in advance that he was going to wind up with those words, and was himself rather astonished at them.
The colonel braced his neck and looked at the young man somewhat narrowly for an instant; after which he subsided, and observed, good-humoredly: "That is saying a good deal, too. What I had in mind, however, was the changed condition of everything here—the melancholy changes that have come since the war. When Fairleigh Park, sir, embraced five hundred acres instead of twelve, and when I had a hundred good niggers, it was a very different matter. Why, sir, even in this poor house there was hardly a stick or a rag left on my return from the field. My books"—here the colonel waved his arm with proprietary pride at the faded volumes on his shelves—"my books fortunately had been removed to Wilmington, where my wife and daughter were in the care of friends; but a foraging party of the Northern soldiery came here, sir, in my absence, and, though there wasn't a soul opposed them, they broke the mirrors, chopped my piano into kindling, stabbed and maimed the pictures on the walls, and tore the hangings into shreds. Yes, sir, that was the noble revenge they took upon me for daring to fight in defence of my native land. Ah, I must not recall those things," he added, recovering himself. "Thank God, we are a united country once more, and I don't regret my share of the loss. But I was also thinking, sir, of Jessie's mother."
The veteran leaned his head on his hand, unable to speak further. There was a quivering of the muscles in his good old, honest, disciplinarian face, that touched Lance's heart.
"I can understand what a loss that has been to you," he said, gently—"and to Miss Jessie."
The colonel raised his head again, and looked with determination at the opposite wall, mustering his self-control.
Lance resumed, with some hesitation, but impelled to speak at this precise moment, though he had not contemplated doing so. "I—I have reflected a great deal about Miss Jessie," he said.
Colonel Floyd's attention was prompt and watchful at once. He regarded the speaker with mingled friendliness and jealousy. "You are very good, my friend," said he.
The younger man smiled involuntarily. "I see no great merit in my thinking of her. I can't help it."
His host hemmed, and gave evidence, by his restless manner, of being ill at ease. "I don't know that I fully understand you," he began, moved by a conviction that he did understand with the greatest distinctness.
"Well," said Lance, "I suppose it ought to be very easy to explain myself; but I find it extremely difficult. I have thought about Miss Jessie—I wish it were possible to add in any way to her happiness."
The colonel rose. "Pray say nothing more," he begged, not unkindly, but with some reserve.
"I will say nothing, if you prefer, beyond this: that her welfare and her future cannot possibly be of greater moment to you than to me."
Lance looked at the colonel squarely until he had finished, and then he dropped his eyes. There was no mistaking the purport of his tone, which went farther than his words.
"My dear fellow," said the colonel, stretching out his hand, "from what I have seen of you I like you; I may say, I esteem you. If you have anything to say which concerns Jessie more than it does me, tell it to her."
The other accepted his hand, and pressed it. They stood thus for a moment, before parting for the night, and Lance saw that the old soldier approved of him. A strange feeling also came over him, that his host and he met not so much on the basis of a possible father-and-son relationship as on that of brotherhood. There was a community in their love for Jessie; each felt the depth of the other's devotion to her, different though it was from his own; and to Lance this mutual trust was of good omen.
Before the breakfast-hour they met again in the pleasant dining-room. The colonel was mixing a mint-julep by an open window which gave upon the garden.
"I'm not feeling quite well," he said, "and so concluded to tone myself up a little. It's a great thing to have a Virginian's grave in your garden."
"Virginian's grave" was the facetious term, as Lance had learned, applied to a bed of mint; in allusion to the theory that where a Virginia gentleman is buried the plant essential to his favorite beverage in life will spring up and multiply.
He laughingly declined to share in the refreshment, and the two said little to each other. Their talk of the night before lingered with them in the form of a slight constraint, mixed with suspense.
But Jessie put all this to flight, when she slipped into the room fresh as the morning sunbeams. She was quick to notice the white packet on the table.
"Oh, how lovely of you, pa," she exclaimed as she opened it, "to take so much trouble! Why, they're exquisite!"
She held the case up admiringly.
The colonel glanced over at their guest, a slight smile wrinkling his bronzed cheeks with fine lines like those in old engravings; and there was a trace of guiltiness in his look, as if he and Lance had been fellow conspirators.
"Don't thank me, my dear," he said. "It's Mr. Lance who was lovely."
"Oh!" cried Jessie. She fastened her eyes on Lance, with a sort of reproach; and his heart sank.
"They're beautiful, though," she continued. "Thank yousomuch, Mr. Lance. Then you didn't get anything for me, pa? Well, I shall have a kiss, anyway." And she ran toward him.
The old man's gray mustache appeared to revive, as he received the salute and gave one in return. "Look under your plate, child," he said, "and you'll find something, will do to give you a treat when we go up to the races at Newbern."
Jessie trotted back to her place, and the treasure under the plate proved to be a gold eagle. Another demonstration of filial fondness ensued, and they all sat down in a good humor; albeit Lance suffered a feeling of unenviable exclusion.
But in a moment or two Jessie jumped up again, and, with the earrings in her hand, went to the glass to put them on. She faced around brightly from her reflected image there, to thank Lance again. "I neverdreamedof getting anything so nice," she said, frankly.
And Lance told himself that he, on the contrary, had many times dreamed of some creature as captivating as she was, but had never quite expected to find the realization. He wondered how, in this solitude and with no one to set her the example, she could have grown up into such charming womanliness.
The doors of Fairleigh Manor, excepting in the most inclement weather, stood always open—a symbol of the owner's frank and hospitable heart. And now when the breakfast was over and Jessie had betaken herself with the two gentlemen to the little morning-room across the hall, a train of darkies—men and women—presented itself at the entrance, bringing good wishes and simple gifts to their young mistress. First of all came old Sally, who folded the fair maiden in her faithful arms and covered her forehead and neck with kisses. Lance, with his abstract theories of equality and his concrete prejudices, which made equality impossible, was rather amazed at this proceeding. He did not relish the spectacle of the black face in such close proximity to the white one. Involuntarily he turned toward the colonel, expecting to find in him some support for his own displeasure; but there was a kindly light in the colonel's eye, and he looked on with approval as the servants approached, one after another, to give greeting in their several ways—the women with less effusion than was permitted to Sally, and the men with awkward bows or friendly grins that attested their speechless affection. Those who shared in this demonstration were elderly servants who had once been slaves, though they were accompanied by a few younger ones—their children, born in freedom. They all brought flowers and leaves; the fragrant yellow jessamine being a favorite form of tribute, alternating with festoons of the trailing vines found in Elbow Crook Swamp, baskets adorned with gray moss, and little ornaments of woven straw.
The colonel's face grew radiant and tender as he watched them. "Faithful creatures!" he said, in undertone to Lance. "Most of my people stayed by me when the fight was over. I told them they were free to go where they liked, that they didn't belong to me any more, and I couldn't tell whether I could give them work—much less support them. But they wouldn't go. They clung round me; and little by little we all got on our feet again. They said: 'You's been a good massa to us, and we ain't gwine to leave you now yore in trouble, Massa Cunnel.' And so we built up, together, what small prosperity there is here now. I had fed and clothed them, Lance, and spent many thousand dollars in buying them, but they did not forget everything, as many white people do. I little thought it would be my old slaves who would help me out in the hour of need—I to whomtheyhad always looked for help. But so it was. My God, it has been worth all the cost and the suffering! We are more human than we were."
The veteran planter was deeply affected; and, as he spoke, a mist seemed to clear away from the young man's mind, and he beheld the simple ceremony that was taking place, in a transfigured light.
Here, close to his eyes, was an act in the endless changes and developments through which humanity is forever passing: the lifting up, the pulling down, the growth of new types and phases, the subsidence of old forms of life, accompanied by the survival of certain among their features.
One of the negroes, bolder than the rest, after wishing Jessie happiness all her days, said he knew it wasn't right to ask her for anything now, but if she "would only give him a little book to read in." ... The book was instantly forthcoming. Jessie went to her secretary, and took one from the slender row of volumes on its upper shelf. But at this Sally came forward again.
"Why, missy," she said softly, in Jessie's ear, where Lance's pearl was trembling, "ole Scip ain't no 'count. He war on'y coachman, you know, befo'. He didn't nevah b'long toyouand the missus. But I come fromyo'side de house, yo' know I does; and now yo' dun gone give him suffin', why I'd kin' o' like dat ar pink frock what you mos' got fru wearin'. 'Tain't good nuff for yo', nohow, missy, and ole Sally she'd be mighty glad on't, ef you don' want it no mo'."
So Jessie laughed, and sent Sally up-stairs to get the garment of her desire; and from that moment on the reception was metamorphosed into an exchange of gifts.
The darkies brought in their vines and clusters, and laid them on the table or draped them with primitive art about the room, until it became a sort of bower, verdant and perfumed with their offerings; and Jessie sat there like an unaffected little queen, distributing tokens to this and that adherent. She knew their humble demands were not prompted by greed, but that they simply loved the old custom of receiving something from their mistress, and could not give it up even though times were so greatly changed.
Lance had now fully entered into the spirit of the scene, and the fancy struck him that it was a repetition of the old story of savages on the New World shores worshipping the first white person who came among them.
What if these negroes had been the aborigines, and his Jessie—or Miss Jessie, rather—had been that Gertrude Wylde whom tradition told of, receiving their homage? The idle query of imagination, thus propounded, brought up to him with renewed force the vision, still unexplained, which had crossed his path on the sea-shore.
In the cool of the afternoon the Floyds and their guest took a drive, rattling gayly on, in the old carry-all, which was the colonel's chariot of state, over many miles of light-earthed road screened for the most part by groves of pine.
The old gentleman discoursed to Lance a good deal about the country and the people, and gave vent to his natural regret that the class once dominant had yielded more and more to a hard, pushing set, who were no doubt doing much to increase the general welfare, but lacked the graces and the repose of the whilom aristocracy. The young Northerner's own conviction was that the old aristocracy had succumbed to a relentless law of nature, for which he entertained the admiration that he believed all natural laws were entitled to; but he could not help regretting somewhat the fate that had overcome his friends and their kind; and it was borne in upon him strongly that so fine a flower of heredity as Jessie appeared to be—however defective the structure of the species to which she belonged—ought not to be involved in this decadence.
You will observe that I am giving you his thoughts in the formal and strictly rational phraseology which it pleased him to adopt. Plainly speaking, he was very much in love with Jessie, and did not care a rap about natural laws or anything else, if they conflicted with her happiness or his chances of winning her.
Meanwhile, as they passed Elbow Crook Swamp, which the road skirted for a considerable distance, he reverted, with every appearance of absorbed interest, to his scheme for reclaiming that tract and converting it into a source of wealth and the means of building up a prosperous, highly intelligent community. The swamp covered a territory of many hundreds of acres. It was rank with cypress, evergreen, oak, and laurel, from which parasitic gray mosses depended in endless garlands, locked in the embrace of luxuriant vines, that hung or crept down to the edge of that slow brown stream, the angular turnings of which gave the place its name. The rich, alluvial soil in which all this greenery rooted held a promise of unlimited fertility; but the only profit which men derived from the splendid waste was found in the cane-brakes, that yielded succulent fodder for hogs or cattle. Lance imagined in this wild expanse a possibility of great results, which might play in well with his humanitarian schemes. He had brooded over the matter ever since first seeing the spot; but the commercial and educational interest attaching thereto was not the only one that kept him thinking about it. Its mysteriousness, its lone solemnity; the frowning masses of dense and forbidding trees; its impenetrability in parts; the danger and savageness of its hidden depths—all these had wrought upon and excited him, until it became impossible for him to get the swamp out of his mind, and he felt that it was somehow connected with his destiny.
In answer to his exposition of his schemes, the colonel, who was fond of a classical allusion, said: "That's all very fine, Lance; but you propose a labor beside which Hercules slaying the Lernean Hydra would be insignificant. You know, that myth is supposed to refer to the draining of a morass. Hercules was the first man who discovered the still mythical disease of malaria, and tried to kill it."
But Lance was not to be discouraged by banter. When they got back to the mansion the colonel judiciously disappeared, and the two young people were left alone on the veranda. Lance began to talk over his theories anew with Jessie, as they sat there just outside the window of the morning-room whence the scent of the pine-boughs, the jessamine, and flowering vines drifted toward them in occasional puffs of fragrant air.
"The people here need so much help, so much enlightening," he said. "I can't give up the idea that something might be done in the way of elevating them."
"Oh, that's only because you're so restless," said Jessie. "You come from the North, and you find it so dull here that you have to think of something to keep you busy."
Her lips pretended that they were smiling with indolent mockery; but she looked so charming, and the contrast between her gray eyes and the Spanish jauntiness of her dark hair was so attractive, that the young man began to think opposition was the pleasantest form of encouragement.
"No," he said, quite earnestly; "I don't think it's mere restlessness. I mean what I say, and I can't help it. And certainly it isn't dull here for me."
He fixed his eyes for a moment on the boards of the veranda-floor, as if meditating. Jessie, in her turn, considered him. In his loose blue flannel suit, with a soft straw hat perched upon his thoughtful head, but throwing no shadow on his features, to which a small brown mustache gave additional emphasis, he certainly was handsome; she had never denied to herself that he was handsome, but she was just now especially impressed with the fact.
"I am going to tell you something curious," he said, lifting his eyes unexpectedly, so that she turned hers quickly toward the garden. He had evidently arrived at the result of his meditation. "It has several times occurred to me," he continued, "that my interest in this locality may have a queer, remote sort of origin that no one would ever suspect."
"Why, what's that?" asked Jessie, in a dreamy tone, feeling sure now that he could not be going to speak of her, since she was neither "queer" nor "remote."
Thereupon Lance went on to relate to her the legend of Gertrude Wylde and Guy Wharton, as well as he could from the stories which he remembered to have heard half jestingly repeated in his father's household. "I am directly descended from Guy Wharton," he stated, in conclusion, "but my name is different, because the male line died out and my father belonged to the posterity of one of the daughters. It's true, all that romance happened a hundred miles or more from here, way up by Roanoke, and I didn't think of it in the least when I started to make this visit; but, some way or other, the thing has come back into my mind, and I begin to fancy that by an occult law of thought it may account for my interest in this place—at least, partly."
Jessie was absorbed by his narration, as her attentiveness and her eager interruptions had shown; but what she said was: "It must be a very occult law indeed." She also emitted a little impertinent laugh, which she did not mean to be impertinent.
Lance was somewhat taken aback. "I dare say it's all foolishness," he admitted; "and there are other elements of interest which are much more obvious."
She was sorry to have brought such confusion upon him, and hastened to revive the conversation.
They got to talking about the negroes; and Lance, alluding to the scene that morning, proceeded to speculate on the problem of the colored race. "There is something very fine in their relation to you," he said, "but it belongs to a phase that has passed away. They ought to be educated, too."
"I'm sure," Jessie answered, "we educate them as much as we can. Didn't you see me give Scip a book? And I've helped to cultivate Aunt Sally's æsthetic tastes by letting her have my pink frock. What more can you ask?"
"You insist upon making fun of me," said Lance, forcing a smile, though a trifle mortified by her lack of enthusiasm. "But you know I'm right."
"Indeed I don't know it!" exclaimed Miss Jessie, vigorously. "You want to change everything, but you can't tell what you would get by the change. You would like to cut down those splendid old trees in the swamp, and turn it into fresh vegetables and berries for New York. But the trees are much nobler than the berries, or even wild-flowers."
"Oh no, I beg your pardon; they're not!" said Lance. "Most of the trees around here are simply monsters. They represent rude, primitive types of vegetation; they are the earliest specimens of Nature's effort to produce flowering plants. Why, the common ox-eye daisy is a far more refined product than they."
"Oh, dear me," cried Jessie, "I never heard that. How much you know! But I like daisies, too; I don't want any of these things destroyed."
"They sha'n't be, then," Lance declared, with offhand omnipotence.
After that, he branched out into an informal lecture on the relationships of various plants and flowers, trying, in the sketchy way that he had learned from cheerfully popular books of science, to give her some conception of the evolution of new types and the persistence of old ones in the flora of the earth, together with the manifold delicate ties of kinship between the different existing forms.
"Then, they are all one big family!" said Jessie, her face lighting with a sympathy that Lance reverently recorded as being maternal. She was as much pleased as if she had discovered a new set of thoroughly desirable relatives. "But oh, Mr. Lance," she added, quickly reflecting, "doesn't that prove that all these types have got to exist? You say that after one crude attempt has been followed by a better development, specimens of the old sort continue—like the pine trees. Now, it seems to me that it's just the same with the human family. We're all related, but we're very unlike; and while some of us have gone on improving, the others have stayed just as they were. The negroes and the poor whites around here are our monsters—for you say the pine trees are monsters—but if we have the pines, why shouldn't we have the others?"
She clapped her hands, in her glee at the argument she had discovered; and it must be admitted that Lance was nonplussed by her swift sagacity.
"But then you must remember," he said, after pausing, "that the human creation has a much greater capacity for growth than the vegetable; and we ought to help it forward in its growth. There's Sylvester De Vine as an example. See how he's rising above his condition! I take the greatest interest in that young fellow, and I believe I'm bound to assist him as far as I can."
"Yes, that's true," Jessie acknowledged. "But it's very nice to have all these contrasts. I don't want them abolished."
Lance could not but be aware that he didn't want them abolished, either. Would he have been willing to obliterate all the differences that existed between Jessie and the majority of the surrounding population? Did he want all other women to be just like her? On the contrary, the reason why he preferred her was that she represented a higher development, a "more specialized" form, an exception to the common mass of inferior beings.
"You're right," he said. "Itisnice to have the contrasts. I admit myself vanquished."
In her triumph Jessie rose from the cane chair where she had sat reclining. "Oh, how splendid!" she cried. "I never expected such a victory. I must find pa, and tell him how I've vanquished you."
Lance also rose, but to detain her. "Don't go yet," he said; "I have something else to say. You have conquered me in another way, too, and I want to hear from you whether you will accept my surrender." In saying this he drew a little closer, and gazed with earnest expectancy into her face.
The sudden stillness and frightened silence with which Jessie at first met his advance were not exactly what one would expect in a conqueror. After an instant, however, she regained her self-possession. Her natural merriment and archness returned as she asked, with her head leaning sideward: "Is the surrender unconditional, Mr. Lance?"
"No. There is one condition, of supreme importance. Ah! Miss Jessie, you understand. Will you listen to me?"
"I can't promise, but I'll try," said Jessie, in a faltering tone. Imperceptibly, as it were, she resumed her place in the chair, and waited. The sun was declining; a faint rumor of odd clucking cries came from the turkey-field at the end of the grounds; but otherwise the air was still, and a spicy coolness stole in to them from the pine-plantations and the distant Sound. "Now tell me," she said, softly.
You may be sure Lance eagerly complied. With an eloquence that had never been his before, he told her what he thought of her; how he loved her, and wished her to be his wife. In his confession he likewise mingled unpremeditated touches about the daisies and the pines, and all that marvel of nature of which they had been talking; and he made her see how to him she was the culminating blossom of creation.
"If you could only guess," he ended, hopeless of conveying all that he wished to, "what a delight your presence is to me—how it is almost enough just to look at you and watch every movement that you make!"
So fine and frank was Jessie's maiden mind, that she no longer thought of concealment. "Why, then you know," she answered, with the surprise of a child, "exactly how I feel aboutyou!"
I do not care to describe what happened after that; for in the first place it belongs only to those two lovers, and in the second place I know it could not be described without tarnishing the pure beauty of it.
In the long interchange of confidences that followed their union, Lance was moved to tell Jessie of the woman he had seen in the moonlight, the night before. "Strange, that she should have made me think of you and of the old Wharton story, isn't it? Who do you suppose she could have been?"
"I can't imagine," said Jessie. "Perhaps you had a moonstroke; isn't there such a thing? Or, perhaps it was a ghost."
When they came in to tea they found the colonel carefully dozing over the market columns of his newspaper. "May I go and get the ring?" whispered Lance, who had owned to her the secret of his hopeful purchase.
Jessie gave a silent assent. He returned quickly, and slipped the emblem on to her finger.
"Mr. Lance has been telling me the most wonderful things!" said Jessie to her father, as they sat at table. "All about flowers and legends and ghosts."
She was holding up a cup at that instant, for the servant to take, and the colonel noticed the sparkle of the new ring on her hand. His eyes threw back an answering sparkle; he gazed fondly at his daughter for an instant, and then, with forgiving kindness, at Lance.
"Miss Jessie refers to an old family history," the young man hastily explained. "I mean the Wyldes and Whartons. It wouldn't seem so wonderful to you, sir."
The colonel threw himself back in his chair, with raised eyebrows. "The Wyldes!" he exclaimed. "You never told me you knewmyfamily history. How does it happen? Or is it, perhaps, only a coincidence of name? By George, it strikes me asverywonderful!"
As Lance, in his turn, showed equal astonishment, it became necessary for him to ask questions; and, by a rapid interchange of replies, they arrived at an extraordinary revelation. The colonel raked out from his library a dingy and ruinous old "family tree," by which ocular demonstration was given of his descent from a branch of the identical Surrey Wyldes that the Gertrude of Lance's story belonged to. Puzzling out the different lines on the old diagram, which represented a trunk and branches, with here and there a big circle like some impossible fruit or an abnormal knot in the wood of the "tree"—the said knots or circles representing fathers of families—they ascertained that the Miss Wylde whose life-current had long ago blended with that of the Floyds was a first cousin of Gertrude Wylde, who had been Guy Wharton's lady-love.
The colonel glowed with interest and enthusiasm. "I never came upon anything more thrilling," he declared, roundly.
"But you never said a word about the Wyldes," said Jessie, to Lance. "If you had, I could have told you there was some connection between us and them."
"I didn't think of it," he assured her, "because there was a sort of doubt in my mind whether the girl was English or an Indian—as I told you. But I knew the name of Wylde was mixed up with the affair, anyhow; and the more I reflect upon it, the more clearly it comes back to me that Gertrude Wylde was the woman whom Guy Wharton came to this country to find, and who was lost here."
They referred once more to the "family tree," and detected there, surely enough, a small branch terminating suddenly with the names of Matthew Wylde and his daughter Gertrude, accompanied by the inscription: "Emigrated to America, 1587."
The colonel, much excited, now brought forth a faded tome devoted to the history of North Carolina. Turning its pages, he unearthed the record of Raleigh's expedition and the search-party that came after it. But the names of the emigrants, of course, were not given.
"I remember," said he, musingly, "that I read of this incident, years ago, and was struck with it. But I should never have imagined that it concerned a collateral branch of my own ancestry. How singular! The Floyds immigrated to this country long after that time, and yet here am I, their representative, who have spent my life in this spot, so near where Gertrude Wylde disappeared from civilization—and I never knew of it!"
The discovery supplied them with a theme for meditation and remark, that lasted the rest of the evening.
Jessie bestirred herself, in the midst of a revery which had enveloped all three, after they had talked for some time, saying: "How much it's like the flowers! We're all one great family—at least,nearlyone."
"Yes," echoed Lance, "nearly one!"
She blushed, and rose to say good-night.
After she had gone, the colonel came to Lance and, drawing his arm around him, said: "God bless you, my boy—and her. I see how it is, and I'm satisfied."
"So am I," said Lance; "except that no man is good enough for her."
What a night that was! Did ever darkness close round a pair more happy than Lance and Jessie? The great heavens seemed to Lance the only canopy that overhung his slumbers; for the thoughts and images that filled his dreaming brain rose beyond the barriers of roof and wall, and included a vast realm of peaceful joy, in which the stars burned ever mildly. He had taken a spray of the yellow jessamine with him to his room. He fancied that its fragrance repeated to him all night long, in untranslatable sweetness, the name so like its own and now so dear to him: "Jessie—Jessie—Jessie." And the knowledge that she was a late comer in the line of the woman whom his ancestor had loved, contributed still another element to his trance of silent rejoicing.
Yet, through the whole delicious maze of happiness, he was aware of a surmise which had not presented itself while he had been awake. It was this: since Jessie had the Wylde blood in her veins, and the woman whom he had met by the shore so strongly suggested a resemblance to Jessie, might there not be some hidden bond between them, dating from the lost Gertrude?
It so happened that Lance, up to this point in his sojourn with the Floyds, had never, to his knowledge, seen Adela Reefe, although she had come once or twice to the house while he was there. On a single occasion he had ridden with Jessie to the cottage at the headland, and had met "the De Vine boys." Becoming interested in Sylvester and his ambitions, he had stopped to see him at other times in the course of his excursions roundabout, and had also received one or two visits from him at Fairleigh Park. He had, to be sure, heard something of Adela Reefe; but the fact that he lacked the smallest idea as to what she looked like was the absent link in his knowledge, which made it impossible to guess who the mysterious girl of the night encounter might be. In fact, he never so much as thought of Adela, and he gave up the riddle as one not likely to be solved. But an event was now approaching which brought him sudden enlightenment.
The date of the races to be held at Newbern had been fixed—somewhat early in the season, it is true—for a time shortly after the occurrences which I have already described; and this affair was the excuse for a general rally of inhabitants from the surrounding districts. Colonel Floyd meant to attend it, with a large part of his household, and Lance, as a matter of course, was going with him.
Dennis De Vine had also looked forward to the festival as the excuse for a great holiday. It had been his intention to take Aunty Losh, Adela, and Sylv in his dug-out sloop, and sail a hundred miles up the Neuse River, to the scene of the merrymaking. But the quarrel with Sylv, which had come so near to a fatal result, threw a cloud over him, and for a time threatened to mar the pleasure of this prospect.
The day after that incident Dennis disappeared from the cabin, and was not seen there again until evening. He was supposed to be out fishing, and did, I believe, actually pass his time in sailing outside the network of sandy spits and islands, as if engaged in trolling for bluefish; but when he returned he brought but few trophies of the hook. I know that during the afternoon he beached his boat on the inner shore beyond Ocracoke, and took to wandering disconsolately along the dreary dunes. The hour of sunset approached as he found himself near the old graveyard of Portsmouth. It was a rough, melancholy, neglected spot; and the thick-sown graves lay near the racing tides that the land which held the dead was gradually crumbling away, and delivered to the sea, from time to time, its mournful burden of forgotten humanity.
Dennis, while trudging unconsciously hither, had been lost in mingled reflections upon the quarrel—alternately grateful for his escape from crime, and remorseful for the passionate temper which had almost swept him on, without premeditation, to the consummation of a terrible deed. All at once he became aware that he stood at the edge of this grim and pathetic graveyard. A shudder ran through him.
"To think," he muttered, "that I was nigh on to bringin' Sylv to such a place as this! And then how would I ha' felt? Oh, God, forgive me! We die soon enough, the best way we can fix it. Why should one man want to kill another?"
Near the water the ground was ragged and worn away, where the chafing of the tides had carried it off piecemeal; and from the gaunt earth several coffins projected, which were soon to fall a prey to the waves. Dennis gazed upon them with a fascinated horror, and as he looked it seemed to him that in the mouldering receptacle of death nearest to him he could see something bright shining through the crevices of the boarding that, warped by long inhumation, leaned partly open. For a moment the wild fancy presented itself that impossible wealth, in the shape of sparkling jewels, had been buried with the unknown inmate of the coffin. He bent a little closer to examine it. At that instant the bank beneath crumbled slightly—some of the sandy soil slipped into the water—and a fresh breeze, sweeping in from the sea, shook the side-plank so that it fell, disclosing the dusty and shapeless contents. Sweat started to the brow of Dennis; he beheld there a row of toads, sitting inert and hideous inside the coffin, with glittering eyes.
No more awful example of the ghastiliness of burial could have confronted him than that. The sight redoubled the agony he was already suffering, and with a staggering motion he turned to retrace his steps.
Dennis was not a reflective man; perhaps he had never before meditated very deeply on the transitoriness of life, and the thousand ways in which oblivion is forever clutching at us, obliterating the few poor traces of our existence that are left when we depart from this world. But the conjunction of circumstances, bringing such a sight to him at that precise moment, wrought powerfully on his mind. "If I could only change!" he said to himself, as he plodded back to his boat. "If I could only be better!"
Yet he was by no means certain that he could improve.
Throughout the next few days he devoted himself to Sylv with a careful tenderness that was almost pathetic. He offered to do him little services; he tried to exhibit an interest in Sylv's reading; he was anxious not to have Slyv expose himself to any undue fatigues or risks or dangers. He would not let him go out in the boat.
"'Pears like you thought you was married a'ready and Sylv was your baby," Aunty Losh observed, with kindly sarcasm, noticing his unwonted solicitude. "But I'm glad on't, Dennie. Bein' as you're older'n him, it ar' right, and I'm glad on't." And thereupon she again betook herself to "paddling" snuff, with a pleasant sense of duty performed.
Sylv understood his brother's contrition, but did his best to banish all remembrance of their saturnine controversy in the wood. "How 'bout Beaufort," he asked, as the time approached for making the final arrangements; "have you seen Deely?"
Now, the truth was that neither of them had seen Deely for several days; she had stayed at home punctiliously, dreading to meet Sylvester by chance, and dreading still more to see Dennis, after what she had overheard.
"No," said Dennis; "but I will see her."
Accordingly he went over to the so-called Doctor Reefe's house at Hunting Quarters, the next day. Adela was at home, but she came out of the house to receive him, and did not ask him in.
"I'm not going," she said at first, facing him with a reserved majesty like that of some wild princess.
"Why not?" he inquired, his eyes still downcast.
"Because I'm afraid. Something might happen."
Dennis shot a swift, indignant glance at her. "What'd happen, I'd like to know?"
"I didn't mean anything," said Adela. "I'm not going; that's what." She saw that she had been too abrupt, and she was determined not to disclose that she knew anything of the altercation.
But Dennis besought her in every way he could think of. "I won't talk to you so, like I did last time," he said, penitently. "I know I'm a rough kind o' fellow. I ain't got no temper—or mebbe I got too much. But I'm sorry for what I done, and sorry for mor'n what you know, Deely. I'll promise to be good if ye'll go."
And so, at last, she consented.
Old Reefe regarded the races as a matter of business, being in the habit, I regret to say, of selling considerable quantities of his untrustworthy herb-medicines on these occasions. He was peculiar and of a solitary turn, and had his own way of going to Newbern. He started three or four days in advance, on foot, and did more or less peddling in the sparsely settled country through which he passed. This arrangement was also quite satisfactory to Dennis. His sloop was made out of two large hollowed cypress logs—as is the custom in those latitudes, where the hard knocks that boats must endure on the shoals soon wear out any lighter craft—and the accommodations aboard were limited; there was really no room for "ole man Reefe."
To people leading so plain and secluded a life as that of the shore, you may imagine what a change and what an outlook of wild excitement this extensive trip to Newbern afforded. Adela was always interested in the boat; Dennis had given her lessons in sailing, and often let her take the helm. Once on board, her old delight returned; doubts and troubles vanished, and it was soon a gay party that sat beneath the sail, now briskly speeding midway up the five-mile-wide current, now tacking from side to side.
An informal, impromptu sort of fair clustered around the races, embracing booths and stalls for the sale of various trumpery, with perhaps a circus in a tent, or merely a nomadic little "show," consisting chiefly of over-colored pictures, that hung upon the canvas wall, flapping and trembling in the breeze as if frightened by their own mendacity. Then, as I have said, "Doctor" Reefe went about, lean and sombre, with grayish hair straggling round his dark cheeks, to hawk his "great Indian remedies," although it did not appear that there were any Indians to be remedied. Adela, who possessed a knack for making ornamental baskets and bead-work, likewise availed herself of the brief season to sell some of her pretty wares, in a modest and desultory way.
Lance, Jessie, and Colonel Floyd occupied themselves at first with looking at the trotters and watching the false starts, the true starts, the judges incessantly ringing a bell in the most confusing way, and the fine, steady rush of the horses around the track, with small sulkies and eager drivers apparently glued to their haunches. But after a time, when a number of heats had been run, there was an intermission, and Lance and Jessie began to stroll about in the crowd, examining the limited means of entertainment, while the colonel talked with some of his cronies among the horse-owners. Blacks and whites were slowly sauntering from point to point, chiefly in separate groups, and our friends kept on the edge of the white crowd. There was a fresh odor of bruised grass in the air, from the treading of many feet, and the beating of a drum sounded from the small tent where an outrageous effigy of the Great Giant of Tartary alternately swelled out threateningly and crumpled itself up ineffectually, as the gusts of wind came and went that fluttered the streamers above him.
Here and there a game of some sort was in progress, though without enlisting much energy from the participants, except in one instance. The exception was due to a newly introduced sport—that of "egg-jumping"—the point of which was that each contestant, in trying to make the longest jump, should carry an egg in either hand. The natural tendency to close the fingers at the moment of leaping was relied on to make jumpers crush the eggs; and most of them came to grief in that way, for a failure to bring either egg intact through the experiment ruined the competitors chance for that time. The enterprising individual who presided over this game had put up several cheap prizes, among which was a brilliant neckerchief for feminine adornment, and charged each person who entered the sum of five cents, the low rate being due to the fact that the eggs consumed were no longer marketable; and their condition was supposed to increase the dismay of the defeated.
The men toed a chalk line on the grass, and jumped from it successively. The line never lacked for the boots of some ambitious contestant ready to make his attempt; and as Lance reached the spot with his companion, the stalwart form of Dennis De Vine was discovered there, gathering itself together for a saltatory effort. He had set his heart on winning the neckerchief for Adela; but, with the eyes of the spectators upon him, he was conscious of being in an absurd position, and his greatest difficulty seemed to be to suppress a smile that was broadening on his lips. Twice or thrice he seemed on the point of jumping, but each time he paused to give way to a bashful guffaw and stamp his bouts on the ground with humorous emphasis. Finally he nerved himself, and, readjusting the fragile burdens in either fist, made his spring. For an instant the sunlight showed brightly on his ruddy cheeks and red hair as he flew from the line, rising a few inches from the sod. Then he landed suddenly, several feet away, slipped, and went down, with the yolks gushing in yellow spurts from the shells. A roar of laughter rose from the crowd.
Dennis looked a little angry, but hastened to rub off the egg-yolks on the grass, and, producing another five cents, took his stand at the line again. He waited for one or two companions in misfortune to repeat his failure; but there was no awkward merriment about him, this time. He was too intent upon success. Holding the new eggs firmly and lightly, swinging his arms and then keeping them well up as he started, he made his second energetic venture; and when his feet struck the turf he raised the two small white objects triumphantly. They were unbroken.
He was rewarded with plaudits and shouts of approbation—the length of the jump was respectable—and, with a reluctant flourish of the kerchief, the proprietor of the game awarded him that prize.
"Good for you, Dennie!" cried a deep and rather musical voice near Lance.
He turned, and recognised Sylv. "Why, how are you?" he asked, cordially.
He would have stepped toward him and shaken hands, but Sylv merely took off his hat, bowing, and gave no sign of expecting further advances. The truth was, he was afraid of Jessie, whose notions of caste made her think it proper to keep these folk at a distance in public places.
"Come," she said to her lover; "let us be going back to the racecourse."
"I wanted to speak a moment with De Vine," Lance objected, mildly. "I intend to make him part of my schemes; don't you see?"
"Oh, well, not here; not now," said Jessie. "He's not your friend, if heisto be your workman. And this is hardly the place."
"Very well," he assented, though not wholly pleased.
But by this time Dennis had elbowed his way through the press of onlookers, bearing his prize like a victorious banner, and Jessie all at once became interested in seeing what he would do with it. "Look!" she exclaimed, abandoning her position of careful reserve. "He's going to give it to his sweetheart—Adela Reefe. Don't you remember my telling you about her? She's really a handsome girl—very handsome. And that reminds me—Imustbuy one of her baskets or boxes. She'd be dreadfully disappointed if I didn't."
The result was that Jessie impulsively carried him off in pursuit of Dennis, whom Sylv also followed.
Old Reefe, mounted on a box under the spreading branches of a tree, not far away, was dispensing his medicaments with an impressively stoical air, now and then addressing the bystanders in a curiously grave manner, quite at variance with the usual volubility of nostrum-dealers; and near him Adela was moving to and fro with a bundle of her handiwork on her arm, waiting for purchasers, but never soliciting them. Aunty Losh smoked her pipe serenely in the background, beneath the shade of the trees.
Lance and Jessie witnessed the pleasant little scene that was enacted, of Dennie's presenting the scarf loyally to his lady-love, and her unfeigned satisfaction in receiving it, while Sylv stood apart for a moment, and then came up to take a share in describing his brother's achievement. They all three broke into smiles and laughter at the recital.
But Lance stood motionless with astonishment. "IsthatAdela Reefe?" he inquired.
"Certainly," Jessie assured him. "Why shouldn't she be?"
Lance was too much surprised to answer. It appeared to him certain, at the very first glance, that this was the same young woman who had of late been so often in his mind; and, as she looked so much like his recollection of her, the resemblance to Jessie which he had before imagined also struck him now. But he could not as yet be quite sure that it existed. He waited until they came nearer before making up his mind on this point.
Meanwhile Jessie pressed forward, and he with her. She greeted Adela with smiles, nodded with the affability of a natural superior to Dennis, and congratulated them both on his success, in a way that made them feel that she had bestowed a favor. She then began to examine Adela's stock-in-trade, holding up the different articles that took her fancy, turning them this way and that, and bringing out their meek decorative value by the sunniness of the light from her own eyes. "This is pretty.That'sremarkably good!" she said, like a connoisseur inspecting rare bric-à-brac. "Oh, Imusthave this box of bark and moss! And that belt—just see how quaint it is, Ned."
Lance quietly received each piece that she selected, and kept every one; so that when she had done choosing and he had paid for them, Adela conceived that it would be unnecessary to sell anything more that day.
The belt which Lance was called upon to admire especially was made of simple undressed leather, but it was embroidered with a design in varicolored beads, so original and ingenious that the thing became positively charming. Through the pattern there ran a series of angular lines that suggested an inscription; as this, however, seemed to be only a whim of the designer, and was illegible, it fell into the general plan of ornament, with an effect like that of hieroglyphics. Miss Jessie's cavalier glanced at it hastily, as they moved away, and was decidedly pleased with the acquisition. But he had no time to consider it, and he was, moreover, exceedingly occupied with the result of the closer scrutiny he had given to Adela.
It had confirmed his idea that there was a degree of likeness in her features to Jessie's; and the fact so impressed him, that he forgot to seize the chance which had offered of a chat with Sylv. He said to the young man only: "I want to see you soon, De Vine, about an important matter. Come up to the manor when you can."
It was impossible to keep the subject out of his mind, as he returned to the racecourse with Jessie; and it recurred again and again that night, which he passed, with the Floyds, in the house of friends at Newbern. A whole rout of bewildering surmises and baffled guesses beset him. If Adela really looked at all like his Jessie, why, he asked himself, had not others discovered it? Why hadn't Jessie herself remarked the fact? But then, on the other hand, the thing was so unlikely, and the positions of the two women were so far apart, that no one here would be apt to notice or for a moment consider such a supposition.
It was not until they were once more, at Fairleigh Park that he looked a second time at the belt which they had bought From Adela. Sitting with Jessie and her father, in the evening, when they were talking over the experience on the rail and at the races, he glanced over the various purchases which had been made, most of them of a more ambitious sort; but when they came to the belt, he studied it with a good deal of care, feeling an interest both in its novelty and in the maker.
Did he dream, or was this another illusion? The angular pattern in the midst of the design, which he had before noticed, unexpectedly assumed a meaning to his eyes. The more sharply he scanned it, the less he doubted his senses, for the beaded lines took with increasing clearness the forms of letters; and, on tracing these out, one after another, he saw that they composed a series of words arranged in coherent order—briefly, a motto.
I am not afraid of being old-fashioned. Therefore I shall ask my reader if he ever came upon any sight—ever was smitten, either in thought or in reading, by any feeling that set a thousand flame-points tingling around his brain, and sent irresistible waves of cold, nervous thrill down his spine. By this I do not mean a thrill of horror, but of supreme and overwhelming emotion that instantly suggests your being in the grasp of some more than human power—the power of endless, ideal forces, directed upon the human organism from without, as the harper's hand is directed with omnipotent sweep upon the strings of his instrument. If my reader, as aforesaid, has had such experience, he will understand the strange, exalting shock of wonder and awe that vibrated through Lance's system when he discerned in the wording on the belt: