John March, Southerner Part 30

"About fifteen minutes."

"It was an hour ago! Barb, you've got hold of another novel. Haven't you learned yet that you can't tell time by that sort of watch?"

"Is mom-a awake?" asked the girl, starting from the mantel-piece.

"Yes--stop!" He extended his large hand, and she knew, as she saw its tremor, that he was in the same kind of transport in which he had flogged Cornelius. In the same instant she was frightened and glad.

"I've headed him off," she thought.

"Barb, your mother's very ill--stop! Johanna's with her. Barb"--his tones sank and hardened--"why did that black hussy try to avoid telling me you were home and Fair had gone off with that whelp, John March?

What? Why don't you speak so I can hear? What are you afraid of?"

"I'm afraid we'll disturb mom-a. Johanna should have told you plainly."

"Oh! indeed! I tell you, if it hadn't been for your mother's presence I'd have thrown her out of the window." An unintentional murmur from Barbara exasperated him to the point of ecstasy. He paled and smiled.

"Barb, did you want to keep me from knowing that Fair was going to Widewood?" They looked steadily into each others' eyes. "Which of us is it you don't trust, that Yankee, or your own father? Don't--" he lifted his palm, but let it sink again. "Don't move your lips that way again; I won't endure it. Barbara Garnet, this is Fannie Halliday's work! So help me, G.o.d, I'd rather I'd taken your little white coffin in my arms eighteen years ago and laid it in the ground than that you should have learned from that poisonous creature the effrontry to suspect me of dishonest--Silence! You ungrateful brat, if you were a son, I'd shake the breath out of you. Have you _ever_ trusted me? Say!"--he stepped close up--"Stop gazing at me like a fool and answer my question! Have you?"

"Don't speak so loud."

"Don't tell me that, you little minx; you who have never half noticed how sick your mother is. Barb"--the speaker's words came through his closed teeth--"Mr. John March can distrust me and leave me out of his precious company as much as he d.a.m.n pleases--if you like his favorite forms of speech--and so may your tomt.i.t Yankee. But you--sha'n't! You sha'n't repay a father's careful plans with suspicions of underhanded rascality, you unregenerate--see here! Do those two pups know you didn't want me to go? Answer me!"

She could not. Her lips moved as he had forbidden, and she was still looking steadily into his blazing eyes, when, as if lightning had struck, she flinched almost off her feet, her brain rang and roared, her sight failed, and she knew she had been slapped in the face.

He turned his back, but the next instant had wheeled again, his face drawn with pain and alarm. "I didn't mean to do that! Oh, good Lord! it wa'n't I! Forgive me, Barb. Oh, Barb, my child, as G.o.d's my witness, I didn't do it of my own free will. He let the devil use me. All my troubles are coming together; your suspicions maddened me."

Her eyes were again in his. She shook her head and pa.s.sed to her mirror, saying, slowly, "G.o.d shall smite thee, thou whited wall." She glanced at the gla.s.s, but the redness of its fellow matched the smitten cheek, and she hurried to the door.

"Barb"--the tone was a deep whine--she stopped without looking back.

"Don't say anything to your mother to startle her. The slightest shock may kill her."

Barbara entered the mother's chamber. Johanna was standing by a window.

The daughter beamed on the maid, and turned to the bed; but consternation quenched the smile when she beheld her mother's face.

"Why, mom-a, sweet."

A thin hand closed weakly on her own, and two sunken blue eyes, bright with distress, looked into hers. "Where is he?" came a feeble whisper.

"Pop-a? Oh, he's coming. If he doesn't come in a moment, I'll bring him." The daughter's glance rested for refuge on the white forehead.

"Shall I go call him?"

The pallid lips made no reply, the sunken eyes still lay in wait.

Barbara racked her mind for disguise of words, but found none. There was no escape. Even to avoid any longer the waiting eyes would confess too much. She met them and they gazed up into hers in still anguish.

Barbara's answered, with a sweet, full serenity. Then without a word or motion came the silent question,

"Did he strike you?"

And Barbara answered, audibly. "No."

She rose, adding, "Let me go and bring him." Conscience rose also and went with her. Just outside the closed door she covered her face in her hands and sank to the floor, moaning under her breath,

"What have I done? What shall I do? Oh G.o.d! why couldn't--why _didn't_ I lie to _him_?" She ran down-stairs on tiptoe.

Her father, with Pettigrew at his side, was offering enthusiasm to a Geometry cla.s.s. "Young gentlemen, a swift, perfect demonstration of a pure abstract truth is as beautiful and delightful to me--to any uncorrupted mind--as perfect music to a perfect ear."

But hearing that his daughter was seeking him, he withdrew.

The two had half mounted the stairs, when a hurried step sounded in the upper hall, and Johanna leaned wildly over the rail, her eyes streaming.

"Miss Barb! Miss Barb! run here! run! come quick, fo' de love of G.o.d!

Oh, de chariots of Israel! de chariots of Israel! De gates o' glory lif'n up dey head!"

Barbara flew up the stairs and into her mother's room. Mr. Pettigrew stood silent among the crystalline beauties of mathematical truth, and a dozen students leaped to their feet as the daughter's long wail came ringing through the house mingled with the cry of Johanna.

"Too late! Too late! De daughteh o' Zion done gone in unbeseen!"

Through two days more Fair lingered, quartered at the Swanee Hotel, and conferred twice more with John March. In the procession that moved up the cedar avenue of the old Suez burying-ground, he stepped beside General Halliday, near its end. Among the headstones of the Montgomeries the long line stopped and sang,

"For oh! we stand on Jordan's strand, Our friends are pa.s.sing over."

In the midst of the refrain, each time, there trembled up in tearful ecstasy, above the common wave of song, the voices of Leviticus Wisdom and his wife. But only once, after the last stanza, Johanna's yet clearer tone answered them from close beside black-veiled Barbara, singing in vibrant triumph,

"An' jess befo', de shiny sho'

We may almos' discoveh."

x.x.xIII.

THE OPPORTUNE MOMENT

Coming from the grave Fair walked with March.

"Yes, I go to-night; I shall see my father within three days. He may think better of your ideas than I do. Don't you suppose really--" etc.

"You think you'll push it anyhow?"

"Yes, sir. In fact, I've got to."

After all others were gone one man still loitered furtively in the cemetery. He came, now, from an alley of arborvitaes with that fantastic elasticity of step which skilled drunkards learn. He had in hand a bunch of limp flowers of an unusual kind, which he had that day ridden all the way to Pulaski City to buy. He stood at the new grave's foot, sank to one knee, wiped true tears from his eyes, pressed apart the evergreens and chrysanthemums piled there, and laid in the midst his own bruised and wilted offering of lilies.

As he reached the graveyard gate in departing his mood lightened.

"An' now gen'le_men_," he said to himself, "is come to pa-a.s.s the ve-y nick an' keno o' time faw a fresh staht. Frien' Gyarnit, we may be happy yit."

He came up behind Fair and March. Fair was speaking of Fannie.

"But where was she? I didn't see her."