Dr. Sevier Part 78

"Yes," responded Mary, with severe gravity; "I must care. You did finish at Holly Springs. I was to find the rest of the way as best I could.

That was the understanding. Go away!" She made a commanding gesture, though she wore a pleading look. He looked grave; but his habitual grimace stole through his gravity and invited her smile. But she remained fixed. He gathered the rein and straightened up in the saddle.

"Yes," she insisted, answering his inquiring att.i.tude; "go! I shall be grateful to you as long as I live. It wasn't because I mistrusted you that I refused your aid at Camp Moore or at----that other place on this side. I don't mistrust you. But don't you see--you must see--it's your duty to see--that this staying and--and--foll--following--is--is--wrong." She stood, holding her skirt in one hand, and Alice's hand in the other, not upright, but in a slightly shrinking att.i.tude, and as she added once more, "Go! I implore you--go!" her eyes filled.

"I will; I'll go," said the man, with a soft chuckle intended for self-abas.e.m.e.nt. "I go, thou goest, he goes. 'I'll skedaddle,' as the felleh says. And yit it do seem to me sorter like,--if my moral sense is worthy of any consideration, which is doubtful, may be,--seems to me like it's sort o' jumpin' the bounty for you to go and go back on an arrangement that's been all fixed up nice and tight, and when it's on'y jess to sort o' 'jump into the wagon' that's to call for you to-morrow, sun-up, drove by a n.i.g.g.e.r boy, and ride a few mile' to a house on the bayou, and wait there till a man comes with a nice little schooner, and take you on bode and sail off, and 'good-by, Sally,' and me never in sight from fust to last, 'and no questions axed.'"

"I don't reject the arrangement," replied Mary, with tearful pleasantness. "If you'll do as I say, I'll do as you say; and that will be final proof to you that I believe you're"--she fell back a step, laughingly--"'the clean sand!'" She thought the man would have perpetrated some small antic; but he did not. He did not even smile, but lifted the rein a little till the horse stepped forward, and, putting out his hand, said:--

"Good-by. You don't need no directions. Jess tell the lady where you'

boardin' that you've sort o' consented to spend a day or two with old Adrien Sanchez, and get into the wagon when it comes for you." He let go her hand. "Good-by, Alice." The child looked up in silence and pressed herself against her mother. "Good-by," said he once more.

"Good-by," replied Mary.

His eyes lingered as she dropped her own.

"Come, Alice," she said, resisting the little one's effort to stoop and pick a wild-pea blossom, and the mother and child started slowly back the way they had come. The spy turned his horse, and moved still more slowly in the opposite direction. But before he had gone many rods he turned the animal's head again, rode as slowly back, and, beside the spot where Mary had stood, got down, and from the small imprint of her shoe in the damp sand took the pea-blossom, which, in turning to depart, she had unawares trodden under foot. He looked at the small, crushed thing for a moment, and then thrust it into his bosom; but in a moment, as if by a counter impulse, drew it forth again, let it flutter to the ground, following it with his eyes, shook his head with an amused air, half of defiance and half of discomfiture, turned, drew himself into the saddle, and with one hand laid upon another on the saddle-bow and his eyes resting on them in meditation, pa.s.sed finally out of sight.

Here, then, in this lone old Creole cottage, Mary was tarrying, prisoner of hope, coming out all hours of the day, and scanning the wide view, first, only her hand to shade her brow, and then with the old ship's-gla.s.s, Alice often standing by and looking up at this extraordinary toy with unspoken wonder. All that Mary could tell her of things seeable through it could never persuade the child to risk her own eye at either end of it. So Mary would look again and see, out in the prairie, in the morning, the reed birds, the marsh hen, the blackbirds, the sparrows, the starlings, with their red and yellow epaulets, rising and fluttering and sinking again among the lilies and mallows, and the white crane, paler than a ghost, wading in the gra.s.sy shallows. She saw the ravening garfish leap from the bayou, and the mullet in shining hundreds spatter away to left and right; and the fisherman and the shrimp-catcher in their canoes come gliding up the gla.s.sy stream, riding down the water-lilies, that rose again behind and shook the drops from their crowns, like water-sprites. Here and there, farther out, she saw the little cat-boats of the neighboring village crawling along the edge of the lake, taking their timid morning cruises. And far away she saw the t.i.tanic clouds; but on the horizon, no sail.

In the evening she would see mocking-birds coming out of the savanna and flying into the live-oaks. A summer duck might dart from the cypresses, speed across the wide green level, and become a swerving, vanishing speck on the sky. The heron might come round the bayou's bend, and suddenly take fright and fly back again. The rattling kingfisher might come up the stream, and the blue crane sail silently through the purple haze that hung between the swamp and the bayou. She would see the gulls, gray and white, on the margin of the lake, the sun setting beyond its western end, and the sky and water turning all beautiful tints; and every now and then, low down along the cool, wrinkling waters, pa.s.sed across the round eye of the gla.s.s the broad, downward-curved wing of the pelican. But when she ventured to lift the gla.s.s to the horizon, she swept it from east to west in vain. No sail.

"Dawn't I tell you no use look? Peter dawn't comin' in day-time, nohow."

But on the fifth morning Mary had hardly made her appearance on the veranda, and had not ventured near the spy-gla.s.s yet, when the old man said:--

"She rain back in swamp las' night; can smell."

"How do you feel this morning?" asked Mary, facing around from her first glance across the waters. He did not heed.

"See dat win'?" he asked, lifting one hand a little from the top of his staff.

"Yes," responded Mary, eagerly; "why, it's--hasn't it--changed?"

"Yes, change' las' night 'fo' went to bed."

The old man's manner betrayed his contempt for one who could be interested in such a change, and yet not know when it took place.

"Why, then," began Mary, and started as if to take down the gla.s.s.

"What you doin'?" demanded its owner. "Better let gla.s.s 'lone; fool' wid him enough."

Mary flushed, and, with a smile of resentful apology, was about to reply, when he continued:--

"What you want gla.s.s for? Dare Peter' schooner--right dare in bayou.

What want gla.s.s for? Can't see schooner hundred yard' off 'dout gla.s.s?"

And he turned away his poor wabbling head in disgust.

Mary looked an instant at two bare, rakish, yellow poles showing out against the clump of cypresses, and the trim little white hull and apple-green deck from which they sprang, then clasped her hands and ran into the house.

CHAPTER LVIII.

A GOLDEN SUNSET.

Dr. Sevier came to Richling's room one afternoon, and handed him a sealed letter. The postmark was blurred, but it was easy still to read the abbreviation of the State's name,--Kentucky. It had come by way of New York and the sea. The sick man reached out for it with avidity from the large bed in which he sat bolstered up. He tore it open with unsteady fingers, and sought the signature.

"It's from a lawyer."

"An old acquaintance?" asked the doctor.

"Yes," responded Richling, his eyes glancing eagerly along the lines.

"Mary's in the Confederate lines!--Mary and Alice!" The hand that held the letter dropped to his lap. "It doesn't say a word about how she got through!"

"But _where_ did she get through?" asked the physician. "Whereabouts is she now?"

"She got through away up to the eastward of Corinth, Mississippi.

Doctor, she may be within fifty miles of us this very minute! Do you think they'll give her a pa.s.s to come in?"

"They may, Richling; I hope they will."

"I think I'd get well if she'd come," said the invalid. But his friend made no answer.

A day or two afterward--it was drawing to the close of a beautiful afternoon in early May--Dr. Sevier came into the room and stood at a window looking out. Madame Zen.o.bie sat by the bedside softly fanning the patient. Richling, with his eyes, motioned her to retire. She smiled and nodded approvingly, as if to say that that was just what she was about to propose, and went out, shutting the door with just sound enough to announce her departure to Dr. Sevier.

He came from the window to the bedside and sat down. The sick man looked at him, with a feeble eye, and said, in little more than a whisper:--

"Mary and Alice"--

"Yes," said the Doctor.

"If they don't come to-night they'll be too late."

"G.o.d knows, my dear boy!"

"Doctor"--

"What, Richling?"

"Did you ever try to guess"--

"Guess what, Richling?"

"_His_ use of my life."