John March, Southerner Part 33

"Cawnsound that foo'--mother, go on up stairs, I'll tell him you've retired."

"I shall do nothing so dishonorable. Why should you bury me alive? Is it because one friend still comes with no scheme for the devastation of our sylvan home?"

Before John could reply sunshine lighted the inquirer's face and she stepped forward elastically to give her hand to Mr. Dinwiddie Pettigrew.

When he was gone, Daphne was still as bland as May, for a moment, and even John's gravity was of a pleasant sort. "Mother, you're just too sweet and modest to see what that man's up to. I'm not. I'd like to tell him to stay away from here. Why, mother, he's--he's courting!"

The mother smiled lovingly. "My son, I'll attend to that. Ah me!

suitors! They come in vain--unless I should be goaded by the sight of these dear Widewood acres invaded by the alien." She sweetened like a bride.

The son stood aghast. She lifted a fond hand to his shoulder. "John, do you know what heart hunger is? You're too young. I am ready to sacrifice anything for you, as I always was for your father. Only, I must reign alone in at least one home, one heart! Fear not; there is but one thing that will certainly drive me again into marriage."

"What's that, mother?"

"A daughter-in-law. If my son marries, I have no choice--I must!" She floated upstairs.

x.x.xVI.

A NEW SHINGLE IN SUEZ

Next day--"John, didn't you rise very early this morning?"

"No, ma'am."

He had not gone to bed. Yet there was a new repose in his face and energy in his voice. He ate breakfast enough for two.

"Millie, hasn't Israel brought my horse yet?"

He came to where his mother sat, kissed her forehead, and pa.s.sed; but her languorous eyes read, written all over him, the fact that she had drawn her cords one degree too tight, and that in the night something had snapped; she had a new force to deal with.

"John"--there was alarm in her voice--he had the door half open--"are you so cruel and foolish as to take last evening's words literally?"

"That's all gay, mother; 'tain't the parson I'm going after, it's the surveyor."

He shut the door on the last word and went away whistling. Not that he was merry; as his horse started he set his teeth, smote in the spurs, and cleared the paling fence at a bound.

The surveyors were Champion and Shotwell. John worked with them. To his own surprise he was the life of the party. Some nights they camped. They sang jolly songs together; but often Shotwell would say:

"O Champion, I'll hush if you will; we're scaring the wolves. Now, if you had such a voice as John's--Go on, March, sing 'Queen o' my Soul.'"

John would sing; Shotwell would lie back on the pine-needles with his eyes shut, and each time the singer reached the refrain, "Mary, Mary, queen of my soul," the impa.s.sioned listener would fetch a whoop and cry, "That's her!" although everybody had known that for years the only "her"

who had queened it over Shotwell's soul was John's own Fannie Halliday.

"Now, March, sing, 'Thou wert the first, thou aht the layst,' an' th'ow yo' whole soul into it like you did last night!"

"John," said Champion once, after March had sung this lament, "You're a plumb fraud. If you wa'n't you couldn't sing that thing an' then turn round and sing, 'They laughed, ha-ha! and they quaffed, ha-ha!'"

"Let's have it!" cried Shotwell. "Paa.s.s tin cups once mo', gen'le_men_!"--tink--tink--

"March," said Champion, "if you'll excuse the personality, what's changed you so?"

John laughed and said he didn't think he was changed, but if he was he reckoned it was evolution. Which did not satisfy Shotwell, who had "quaffed, ha-ha!" till he was argumentative.

"Don't you 'scuse personal'ty 't all, March. I know wha's change' you.

'Tain't no 'sperience. You ain't been converted. You're gettin' _ripe_!

'S all is about it. Wha' changes green persimmons? 's nature; 'tain't 'sperience."

"Well, I'd like to know if sunshine an' frost ain't experiences,"

retorted Champion.

"Some experiences," laughed John, "are mighty hot sunshine, and some are mighty hard frosts." To which the two old soldiers a.s.sented with more than one sentimental sigh as the three rolled themselves in their blankets and closed their eyes.

When the survey was done they made a large colored map of everything, and John kept it in a long tin tube--what rare times he was not looking at it.

"How short-sighted most men are! They'll have lands to dispose of and yet not have maps made! How the devil do they expect ever"--etc.

Sometimes he smiled to himself as he rolled the gorgeous thing up, but only as we smile at the oddities of one whom we admire.

He opened an office. It contained a mantel-piece, a desk, four chairs, a Winchester rifle, and a box of cigars. The hearth and mantel-piece were crowded with specimens of earths, ores, and building stones, and of woods precious to the dyer, the manufacturer, the joiner and the cabinet-maker. Inside the desk lay the map whenever he was, and a revolver whenever he was not--"Out. Will be back in a few minutes."

On the desk's top were more specimens, three or four fat old books from Widewood, and on one corner, by the hour, his own feet, in tight boots, when he read Washington's Letters, Story on the Const.i.tution, or the Geology of Dixie. What interested Suez most of all was his sign. It professed no occupation. "John March." That was all it proclaimed, for a time, in gilt, on a field of blue smalts. But one afternoon when he was--"Out of town. Will be back Friday"--some Rosemont boys scratched in the smalts the tin word, Gentleman.

"Let it alone, John," said the next day's _Courier_. "It's a good ad., and you can live up to it." It stayed.

x.x.xVII.

WISDOM AND FAITH KISS EACH OTHER

It came to pa.s.s in those days that an effort to start a religious revival issued from Suez "University." It seems the "Black-and-Tannery,"

as the Rosemont boys called it, was having such increase in numbers that its president had thought well to give the national thanks-giving day special emphasis on the devotional side. Prayer for gifts of grace to crown these temporal good fortunes extended over into a second and third evening, black young women and tan young men asked to be prayed for, the president "wired" glad news to the board in New York, the board "wired"

back, "Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward!"--just ten words, economy is the road to commendation--meetings were continued, and the gray-headed black janitor, richest man in the inst.i.tution, leading in prayer, promised that if the Lord would "come down" then and there, "right thoo de roof," he himself would pay for the shingles!

Since corner-stone day the shabby-coated president had not known such joy. In the chapel, Sunday morning, he read the story of the two lepers who found the Syrian camp deserted in the siege of Samaria; and preached from the text, "We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace.... So they came and called unto the porter of the city." That afternoon he went to Parson Tombs. The pastor was cordial, brotherly; full of tender gladness to hear of the "manifestations." They talked a great while, were pleased with each other, and came to several kind and unexpected agreements. They even knelt and prayed together. As to the president's specific errand--his proposal for a week of union revival meetings in Parson Tomb's church, with or without the town congregation, the "university students" offering to occupy only the gallery--the pastor said that as far as _he_ was concerned, he was much disposed to favor it.

"Why, befo' the wa' ow slaves used to worship with us; I've seen ow gallery half full of 'm! And we'd be only too glad to see it so again--for we love 'em yet, seh--if they wouldn't insist so on mixin'

religion an' politics. I'll consult some o' my people an' let you know."

When he consulted his church officers that evening only two replied approvingly. One of them was the oldest, whitest haired man in the church. "Faw my part," he said, "I don't think the churches air a-behavin' theyse'ves like Christians to the niggehs anywheres. I jest know ef my Lawd an' Master was here in Dixie now he'd not bless a single one of all these separations between churches, aw in churches, unless it's the separation o' the s.e.xes, which I'm pow'ful sorry to see that broke up. I'm faw invitin' them people, dry-so, an' I don't give a cent whether they set upstairs aw down"--which was true.

The other approving voice was young Doctor Grace.