John March, Southerner Part 24

"Why, the dahkeys got they fifteen hund'ed!"

"Don't they claim twenty-two fifty?"

"Well, they jess betteh not!"

"Rascally trick!"

"Sir," said John, "Mr. Ravenel is my personal friend. If you make another such comment on his actions I shall treat it as if made on mine."

"Come, Come!" exclaimed Gamble, commandingly; "we can't have----"

"You'll have whatever I give, sir!"

Three or four men half rose, smiling excitedly, but sank down again.

"You think, sir," insisted John, to the Englishman's calmly averted face, "that being in a free country--" he dashed off Shotwell's remonstrant hand.

"'Tain't a free country at all," said the Briton to the outer landscape.

"There's hardly a corner in Europe but's freer."

"Ireland, for instance," sneered John.

"Ireland be d.a.m.ned," responded the foreigner, still still looking out the window. "Go tell your nurse to give you some bread and b.u.t.ter."

John leaped and swept the air with his open palm. Gamble's clutch half arrested it in front, Shotwell hindered it from behind, neither quite stopped it.

"Did he slap him?" eagerly asked a dozen men standing on the seats.

"He barely touched him," was the disappointed reply of one.

"Thank the Lawd faw evm that little!" responded another.

Shotwell pulled March away, Halliday following. Near the rear door----

"Johnnie," began the General, with an air of complete digression, but at the woebegone look that came into the young man's face, the old soldier burst into a laugh. John whisked around to the door and stood looking out, though seeing nothing, bitter in the thought that not for the Englishman's own sake, but for the sake of the British capital coveted by Suez, a gentleman and a Rosemonter was forbidden to pay him the price of his insolence.

"I'd like to pa.s.s," presently said someone behind him. He started, and Gamble went by.

"May I detain you a moment, sir?" said John.

The president frowned. "What is it?"

"In our pa.s.sage of words just now--I was wrong."

"Yes, you were. What of it?"

"I regret it."

"I can't use your regrets," said the railroad man. He moved to go. "If you want to see me about----"

John smiled. "No, sir, I'd rather never set eyes on you again."

As the Westerner's fat back pa.s.sed into the farther coach his response came----

"What you want ain't manners, it's gumption." The door slammed for emphasis.

March presently followed, full of shame and indignation and those unutterable wailings with which youth, so often, has to be born again into manhood. Gamble had rejoined the Garnet group. John bowed affably to all, smiled to Fannie and pa.s.sed. Garnet still sat with Mrs. Proudfit behind the others, and John, as he went by, was, for some cause supplied by this pair, startled, angered anew, and for the time being benumbed by conflicting emotions. He found his mother still talking joyously with the Graveses, who were unfamiliar with the graceful art of getting away.

He found a seat in front of them, and sat stiff beside a man who drowsed.

"I'm a hopeless fool," he thought, "a fool in anger, a fool in love. A fool even in the eyes of that idiot of a railroad president in yonder smirking around Fannie.

"They'll laugh at me together, I suppose. O, Fannie, why can't I give you up? I know you're a flirt. Jeff-Jack knows it. I solemnly believe that's why he doesn't ask you to marry him!

"Yes, they're probably all laughing at me by now. O, was ever mortal man so utterly alone! And these people think what makes me so is this silly temper. They say it! Mother a.s.sures me they say it! I believe I could colonize our lands if it wa'n't for that. O, I will colonize them! I'll do it all alone. If that jackanapes could open this road I can open our lands. Whatever he used I can use; whatever he did I can do!"

"Sir?" said the neighbor at his elbow, "O excu--I thought you spoke."

"Hem! No, I was merely clearing my throat.

"I can do it. I'll do it alone. She shall see me do it--they shall all see. I'll do it alone--all alone----"

He caught the steel-shod rhythm of the train and said over and over with ever bigger and more bitter resolution, "I'll do it alone--I'll do it alone!"

Then he remembered Garnet.

XXVII.

TO SUSIE--FROM p.u.s.s.iE

ON the return trip Garnet sat on the arm of almost every seat except Fannie's.

"No, sir; no, keep your seat!" He wouldn't let anybody be "disfurnished"

for him! Proudfit had got the place next his wife and thought best to keep it.

"Mr. Fair," said Garnet, "I'd like you to notice how all this region was made in ages past. You see how the rocks have been broken and tossed,"--etc.

"Mr. Fair"--the same speaker--"I _wish_ you'd change your mind and stay a week with us. Come, spend it at Rosemont. It's vacation, you know, and Barb and I shan't have a thing to do but give you a good time; shall we, Barb?"

"It will give us a good time," said Barb. Her slow, cadenced voice, steady eye, and unchallenging smile charmed the young Northerner.

He had talked about her to Fannie at luncheon and p.r.o.nounced her "unusual."

"Why, really"--he began, looked up at Garnet and back again to Barbara.

Garnet bent over him confidentially.

"Just between us I'd like to advise with you about something I've never mentioned to a soul. That is about sending Barb to some place North to sort o' round out her education and character in a way that--it's no use denying it, though it would never do for me to say so--a way that's just impossible in Dixie, sir."