True and Other Stories Part 7

"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 a.s.sist 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 ma.s.s of inferior beings.

"You're right," he said. "It _is_ nice 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 about _you_!"

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 a.s.sent. 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 knew _my_ family history.

How does it happen? Or is it, perhaps, only a coincidence of name? By George, it strikes me as _very_ wonderful!"

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 a.s.sured 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, _nearly_ one."

"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: "G.o.d 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 sh.o.r.e so strongly suggested a resemblance to Jessie, might there not be some hidden bond between them, dating from the lost Gertrude?

CHAPTER VII.

THE RACES, AND THE MOTTO.

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.