________________________________________________
_ Summer was come again. Through interminable days, the sun beat down upon
the city; and at night the tortured bricks flung back angrily the heat
with which he had filled them. Great battles had been fought, and vast
armies were drawing breath for greater ones to come.
"Jinny," said the Colonel one day, "as we don't seem to be much use in
town, I reckon we may as well go to Glencoe."
Virginia, threw her arms around her father's neck. For many months she
had seen what the Colonel himself was slow to comprehend--that his
usefulness was gone. The days melted into weeks, and Sterling Price and
his army of liberation failed to come. The vigilant Union general and
his aides had long since closed all avenues to the South. For, one fine
morning toward the end of the previous summer, when the Colonel was
contemplating a journey, he had read that none might leave the city
without a pass, whereupon he went hurriedly to the office of the Provost
Marshal. There he had found a number of gentlemen in the same plight,
each waving a pass made out by the Provost Marshal's clerks, and waiting
for that officer's signature. The Colonel also procured one of
these, and fell into line. The Marshal gazed at the crowd, pulled off
his coat, and readily put his name to the passes of several gentlemen
going east. Next came Mr. Bub Ballington, whom the Colonel knew, but
pretended not to.
"Going to Springfield?" asked the Marshal, genially.
"Yes," said Bub.
"Not very profitable to be a minute-man, eh?" in the same tone.
The Marshal signs his name, Mr, Ballington trying not to look indignant
as he makes for the door. A small silver bell rings on the Marshal's
desk, the one word: "Spot!" breaks the intense silence, which is one way
of saying that Mr. Ballington is detained, and will probably be lodged
that night at Government expense.
"Well, Colonel Carvel, what can I do for you this morning?" asked the
Marshal, genially.
The Colonel pushed back his hat and wiped his brow. "I reckon I'll wait
till next week, Captain," said Mr. Carvel. "It's pretty hot to travel
just now."
The Provost Marshal smiled sweetly. There were many in the office who
would have liked to laugh, but it did not pay to laugh at some people.
Colonel Carvel was one of them.
In the proclamation of martial law was much to make life less endurable
than ever. All who were convicted by a court-martial of being rebels
were to have property confiscated, and slaves set free. Then there was a
certain oath to be taken by all citizens who did not wish to have
guardians appointed over their actions. There were many who swallowed
this oath and never felt any ill effects. Mr. Jacob Cluyme was one, and
came away feeling very virtuous. It was not unusual for Mr. Cluyme to
feel virtuous. Mr. Hopper did not have indigestion after taking it, but
Colonel Carvel would sooner have eaten, gooseberry pie, which he had
never tasted but once.
That summer had worn away, like a monster which turns and gives hot gasps
when you think it has expired. It took the Arkansan just a month, under
Virginia's care, to become well enough to be sent to a Northern prison
He was not precisely a Southern gentleman, and he went to sleep over the
"Idylls of the King." But he was admiring, and grateful, and wept when
he went off to the boat with the provost's guard, destined for a Northern
prison. Virginia wept too. He had taken her away from her aunt (who
would have nothing to do with him), and had given her occupation. She
nor her father never tired of hearing his rough tales of Price's rough
army.
His departure was about the time when suspicions were growing set. The
favor had caused comment and trouble, hence there was no hope of giving
another sufferer the same comfort. The cordon was drawn tighter. One
of the mysterious gentlemen who had been seen in the vicinity of Colonel
Carvel's house was arrested on the ferry, but he had contrived to be rid
of the carpet-sack in which certain precious letters were carried.
Throughout the winter, Mr. Hopper's visits to Locust Street had continued
at intervals of painful regularity. It is not necessary to dwell upon
his brilliant powers of conversation, nor to repeat the platitudes which
he repeated, for there was no significance in Mr. Hopper's tales, not a
particle. The Colonel had found that out, and was thankful. His manners
were better; his English decidedly better.
It was for her father's sake, of course, that Virginia bore with him.
Such is the appointed lot of women. She tried to be just, and it
occurred to her that she had never before been just. Again and again she
repeated to herself that Eliphalet's devotion to the Colonel at this low
ebb of his fortunes had something in it of which she did not suspect him.
She had a class contempt for Mr. Hopper as an uneducated Yankee and a
person of commercial ideals. But now he was showing virtues,--if virtues
they were,--and she tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. With his
great shrewdness and business ability, why did he not take advantage of
the many opportunities the war gave to make a fortune? For Virginia had
of late been going to the store with the Colonel,--who spent his mornings
turning over piles of dusty papers, and Mr. Hopper had always been at his
desk.
After this, Virginia even strove to be kind to him, but it was uphill
work. The front door never closed after one of his visits that suspicion
was not left behind. Antipathy would assert itself. Could it be that
there was a motive under all this plotting? He struck her inevitably as
the kind who would be content to mine underground to attain an end. The
worst she could think of him was that he wished to ingratiate himself
now, in the hope that, when the war was ended, he might become a partner
in Mr. Carvel's business. She had put even this away as unworthy of her.
Once she had felt compelled to speak to her father on the subject.
"I believe I did him an injustice, Pa," she said. "Not that I like him
any better now. I must be honest about that. I simply can't like him.
But I do think that if he had been as unscrupulous as I thought, he would
have deserted you long ago for something more profitable. He would not
be sitting in the office day after day making plans for the business when
the war is over."
She remembered how sadly he had smiled at her over the top of his paper.
"You are a good girl, Jinny," he said.
Toward the end of July of that second summer riots broke out in the city,
and simultaneously a bright spot appeared on Virginia's horizon. This
took the form, for Northerners, of a guerilla scare, and an order was
promptly issued for the enrollment of all the able-bodied men in the ten
wards as militia, subject to service in the state, to exterminate the
roving bands. Whereupon her Britannic Majesty became extremely popular,
--even with some who claimed for a birthplace the Emerald Isle. Hundreds
who heretofore had valued but lightly their British citizenship made
haste to renew their allegiance; and many sought the office of the
English Consul whose claims on her Majesty's protection were vague, to
say the least. Broken heads and scandal followed. For the first time,
when Virginia walked to the store with her father, Eliphalet was not
there. It was strange indeed that Virginia defended him.
"I don't blame him for not wanting to fight for the Yankees," she said.
The Colonel could not resist a retort.
"Then why doesn't he fight for the South he asked"
"Fight for the South!" cried the young lady, scornfully. "Mr. Hopper
fight? I reckon the South wouldn't have him."
"I reckon not, too," said the Colonel, dryly.
For the following week curiosity prompted Virginia to take that walk with
the Colonel. Mr. Hopper being still absent, she helped him to sort the
papers--those grimy reminders of a more prosperous time gone by. Often
Mr. Carvel would run across one which seemed to bring some incident to
his mind; for he would drop it absently on his desk, his hand seeking his
chin, and remain for half an hour lost in thought. Virginia would not
disturb him.
Meanwhile there had been inquiries for Mr. Hopper. The Colonel answered
them all truthfully--generally with that dangerous suavity for which he
was noted. Twice a seedy man with a gnawed yellow mustache had come in
to ask Eliphalet's whereabouts. On the second occasion this individual
became importunate.
"You don't know nothin' about him, you say?" he demanded.
"No," said the Colonel.
The man took a shuffle forward.
"My name's Ford," he said. "I 'low I kin 'lighten you a little."
"Good day, sir," said the Colonel.
"I guess you'll like to hear what I've got to say."
"Ephum," said Mr. Carvel in his natural voice, "show this man out."
Mr. Ford slunk out without Ephum's assistance. But he half turned at the
door, and shot back a look that frightened Virginia.
"Oh, Pa," she cried, in alarm, "what did he mean?"
"I couldn't tell you, Jinny," he answered. But she noticed that he was
very thoughtful as they walked home. The next morning Eliphalet had not
returned, but a corporal and guard were waiting to search the store for
him. The Colonel read the order, and invited them in with hospitality.
He even showed them the way upstairs, and presently Virginia heard them
all tramping overhead among the bales. Her eye fell upon the paper they
had brought, which lay unfolded on her father's desk. It was signed
Stephen A. Brice, Enrolling Officer.
That very afternoon they moved to Glencoe, and Ephum was left in sole
charge of the store. At Glencoe, far from the hot city and the cruel
war, began a routine of peace. Virginia was a child again, romping in
the woods and fields beside her father. The color came back to her
cheeks once more, and the laughter into her voice. The two of them, and
Ned and Mammy, spent a rollicking hour in the pasture the freedom of
which Dick had known so long, before the old horse was caught and brought
back into bondage. After that Virginia took long drives with her father,
and coming home, they would sit in the summer house high above the
Merimec, listening to the crickets' chirp, and watching the day fade upon
the water. The Colonel, who had always detested pipes, learned to smoke
a corncob. He would sit by the hour, with his feet on the rail of the
porch and his hat tilted back, while Virginia read to him. Poe and
Wordsworth and Scott he liked, but Tennyson was his favorite. Such
happiness could not last.
One afternoon when Virginia was sitting in the summer house alone, her
thoughts wandering back, as they sometimes did, to another afternoon she
had spent there,--it seemed so long ago,--when she saw Mammy Easter
coming toward her.
"Honey, dey's comp'ny up to de house. Mister Hopper's done arrived.
He's on de porch, talkin' to your Pa. Lawsey, look wha he come!"
In truth, the solid figure of Eliphalet himself was on the path some
twenty yards behind her. His hat was in his hand; his hair was plastered
down more neatly than ever, and his coat was a faultless and sober
creation of a Franklin Avenue tailor. He carried a cane, which was
unheard of. Virginia sat upright, and patted her skirts with a gesture
of annoyance--what she felt was anger, resentment. Suddenly she rose,
swept past Mammy, and met him ten paces from the summer house.
"How-dy-do, Miss Virginia," he cried pleasantly. "Your father had a
notion you might be here." He said fayther.
Virginia gave him her hand limply. Her greeting would have frozen a man
of ardent temperament. But it was not precisely ardor that Eliphalet
showed. The girl paused and examined him swiftly. There was something
in the man's air to-day.
"So you were not caught?" she said.
Her words seemed to relieve some tension in him. He laughed noiselessly.
"I just guess I wahn't."
"How did you escape?" she asked, looking at him curiously.
"Well, I did, first of all. You're considerable smart, Miss Jinny, but
I'll bet you can't tell me where I was, now."
"I do not care to know. The place might save you again."
He showed his disappointment. "I cal'lated it might interest you to know
how I dodged the Sovereign State of Missouri. General Halleck made an
order that released a man from enrolling on payment of ten dollars. I
paid. Then I was drafted into the Abe Lincoln Volunteers; I paid a
substitute. And so here I be, exercising life, and liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness."
"So you bought yourself free?" said Virginia. "If your substitute gets
killed, I suppose you will have cause for congratulation."
Eliphalet laughed, and pulled down his cuffs. "That's his lookout, I
cal'late," said he. He glanced at the girl in a way that made her
vaguely uneasy. She turned from him, back toward the summer house.
Eliphalet's eyes smouldered as they rested upon her figure. He took a
step forward.
"Miss Jinny?" he said.
"Yes?"
"I've heard considerable about the beauties of this place. Would you
mind showing me 'round a bit?" Virginia started. It was his tone now.
Not since that first evening in Locust Street had it taken on such
assurance, And yet she could not be impolite to a guest.
"Certainly not," she replied, but without looking up. Eliphalet led the
way. He came to the summer house, glanced around it with apparent
satisfaction, and put his foot on the moss-grown step. Virginia did a
surprising thing. She leaped quickly into the doorway before him, and
stood facing him, framed in the climbing roses.
"Oh, Mr. Hopper!" she cried. "Please, not in here." He drew back,
staring in astonishment at the crimson in her face.
"Why not?" he asked suspiciously--almost brutally. She had been groping
wildly for excuses, and found none.
"Because," she said, "because I ask you not to." With dignity: "That
should be sufficient."
"Well," replied Eliphalet, with an abortive laugh, "that's funny, now.
Womenkind get queer notions, which I cal'late we've got to respect and
put up with all our lives--eh?"
Her anger flared at his leer and at his broad way of gratifying her whim.
And she was more incensed than ever at his air of being at home--it was
nothing less.
The man's whole manner was an insult. She strove still to hide her
resentment.
"There is a walk along the bluff," she said, coldly, "where the view is
just as good."
But she purposely drew him into the right-hand path, which led, after a
little, back to the house. Despite her pace he pressed forward to her
side.
"Miss Jinny," said he, precipitately, "did I ever strike you as a
marrying man?"
Virginia stopped, and put her handkerchief to her face, the impulse
strong upon her to laugh. Eliphalet was suddenly transformed again into
the common commercial Yankee. He was in love, and had come to ask her
advice. She might have known it.
"I never thought of you as of the marrying kind, Mr. Hopper," she
answered, her voice quivering.
Indeed, he was irresistibly funny as he stood hot and ill at ease. The
Sunday coat bore witness to his increasing portliness by creasing across
from the buttons; his face, fleshy and perspiring, showed purple veins,
and the little eyes receded comically, like a pig's.
"Well, I've been thinking serious of late about getting married," he
continued, slashing the rose bushes with his stick. "I don't cal'late to
be a sentimental critter. I'm not much on high-sounding phrases, and
such things, but I'd give you my word I'd make a good husband."
"Please be careful of those roses, Mr. Hopper."
"Beg pardon," said Eliphalet. He began to lose track of his tenses--that
was the only sign he gave of perturbation. "When I come to St. Louis
without a cent, Miss Jinny, I made up my mind I'd be a rich man before
I left it. If I was to die now, I'd have kept that promise. I'm not
thirty-four, and I cal'late I've got as much money in a safe place as a
good many men you call rich. I'm not saying what I've got, mind you.
All in proper time.
"I'm a pretty steady kind. I've stopped chewing--there was a time when I
done that. And I don't drink nor smoke."
"That is all very commendable, Mr. Hopper," Virginia said, stifling a
rebellious titter. "But,--but why did you give up chewing?"
"I am informed that the ladies are against it," said Eliphalet,--"dead
against it. You wouldn't like it in a husband, now, would you?"
This time the laugh was not to be put down. "I confess I shouldn't," she
said.
"Thought so," he replied, as one versed. His tones took on a nasal
twang. "Well, as I was saying, I've about got ready to settle down, and
I've had my eye on the lady this seven years."
"Marvel of constancy!" said Virginia. "And the lady?"
"The lady," said Eliphalet, bluntly, "is you." He glanced at her
bewildered face and went on rapidly: "You pleased me the first day I set
eyes on you in the store I said to myself, 'Hopper, there's the one for
you to marry.' I'm plain, but my folks was good people. I set to work
right then to make a fortune for you, Miss Jinny. You've just what I
need. I'm a plain business man with no frills. You'll do the frills.
You're the kind that was raised in the lap of luxury. You'll need a man
with a fortune, and a big one; you're the sort to show it off. I've got
the foundations of that fortune, and the proof of it right here. And I
tell you,"--his jaw was set,--"I tell you that some day Eliphalet Hopper
will be one of the richest men in the West."
He had stopped, facing her in the middle of the way, his voice strong,
his confidence supreme. At first she had stared at him in dumb wonder.
Then, as she began to grasp the meaning of his harangue, astonishment was
still dominant,--sheer astonishment. She scarcely listened. But, as he
finished, the thatch of the summer house caught her eye. A vision arose
of a man beside whom Eliphalet was not worthy to crawl. She thought of
Stephen as he had stood that evening in the sunset, and this proposal
seemed a degradation. This brute dared to tempt her with money.
Scalding words rose to her lips. But she caught the look on Eliphalet's
face, and she knew that he would not understand. This was one who rose
and fell, who lived and loved and hated and died and was buried by--
money.
For a second she looked into his face as one who escapes a pit gazes over
the precipice, and shuddered. As for Eliphalet, let it not be thought
that he had no passion. This was the moment for which he had lived since
the day he had first seen her and been scorned in the store. That type
of face, that air,--these were the priceless things he would buy with his
money. Crazed with the very violence of his long-pent desire, he seized
her hand. She wrung it free again.
"How--how dare you!" she cried.
He staggered back, and stood for a moment motionless, as though stunned.
Then, slowly, a light crept into his little eyes which haunted her for
many a day.
"You--won't--marry me?" he said.
"Oh, how dare you ask me!" exclaimed Virginia, her face burning with
the shame of it. She was standing with her hands behind her, her back
against a great walnut trunk, the crusted branches of which hung over the
bluff. Even as he looked at her, Eliphalet lost his head, and
indiscretion entered his soul.
"You must!" he said hoarsely. "You must! You've got no notion of my
money, I say."
"Oh!" she cried, "can't you understand? If you owned the whole of
California, I would not marry you." Suddenly he became very cool. He
slipped his hand into a pocket, as one used to such a motion, and drew
out some papers.
"I cal'late you ain't got much idea of the situation, Miss Carvel," he
said; "the wheels have been a-turning lately. You're poor, but I guess
you don't know how poor you are,--eh? The Colonel's a man of honor,
ain't he?"
For her life she could not have answered,--nor did she even know why she
stayed to listen.
"Well," he said, "after all, there ain't much use in your lookin' over
them papers. A woman wouldn't know. I'll tell you what they say: they
say that if I choose, I am Carvel & Company."
The little eyes receded, and he waited a moment, seemingly to prolong a
physical delight in the excitement and suffering of a splendid creature.
The girl was breathing fast and deep.
"I cal'late you despise me, don't you?" he went on, as if that, too,
gave him pleasure. "But I tell you the Colonel's a beggar but for me.
Go and ask him if I'm lying. All you've got to do is to say you'll be my
wife, and I tear these notes in two. They go over the bluff." (He made
the motion with his hands.) "Carvel & Company's an old firm,--a
respected firm. You wouldn't care to see it go out of the family, I
cal'late."
He paused again, triumphant. But she did none of the things he expected.
She said, simply:--"Will you please follow me, Mr. Hopper."
And he followed her,--his shrewdness gone, for once,
Save for the rise and fall of her shoulders she seemed calm. The path
wound through a jungle of waving sunflowers and led into the shade in
front of the house. There was the Colonel sitting on the porch. His
pipe lay with its scattered ashes on the boards, and his head was bent
forward, as though listening. When he saw the two, he rose expectantly,
and went forward to meet them. Virginia stopped before him.
"Pa," she said, "is it true that you have borrowed money from this man?"
Eliphalet had seen Mr. Carvel angry once, and his soul had quivered.
Terror, abject terror, seized him now, so that his knees smote together.
As well stare into the sun as into the Colonel's face. In one stride he
had a hand in the collar of Eliphalet's new coat, the other pointing down
the path.
"It takes just a minute to walk to that fence, sir," he said sternly.
"If you are any longer about it, I reckon you'll never get past it.
You're a cowardly hound, sir!" Mr. Hopper's gait down the flagstones was
an invention of his own. It was neither a walk, nor a trot, nor a run,
but a sort of sliding amble, such as is executed in nightmares. Singing
in his head was the famous example of the eviction of Babcock from the
store,--the only time that the Colonel's bullet had gone wide. And down
in the small of his back Eliphalet listened for the crack of a pistol,
and feared that a clean hole might be bored there any minute. Once
outside, he took to the white road, leaving a trail of dust behind him
that a wagon might have raised. Fear lent him wings, but neglected to
lift his feet.
The Colonel passed his arm around his daughter, and pulled his goatee
thoughtfully. And Virginia, glancing shyly upward, saw a smile in the
creases about his mouth: She smiled, too, and then the tears hid him from
her.
Strange that the face which in anger withered cowards and made men look
grave, was capable of such infinite tenderness,--tenderness and sorrow.
The Colonel took Virginia in his arms, and she sobbed against his
shoulder, as of old.
"Jinny, did he--?"
"Yes--"
"Lige was right, and--and you, Jinny--I should never have trusted him.
The sneak!"
Virginia raised her head. The sun was slanting in yellow bars through
the branches of the great trees, and a robin's note rose above the bass
chorus of the frogs. In the pauses, as she listened, it seemed as if she
could hear the silver sound of the river over the pebbles far below.
"Honey," said the Colonel,--"I reckon we're just as poor as white trash."
Virginia smiled through her tears.
"Honey," he said again, after a pause," I must keep my word and let him
have the business."
She did not reproach him.
"There is a little left, a very little," he continued slowly, painfully.
"I thank God that it is yours. It was left you by Becky--by your mother.
It is in a railroad company in New York, and safe, Jinny."
"Oh, Pa, you know that I do not care," she cried. "It shall be yours
and mine together. And we shall live out here and be happy."
But she glanced anxiously at him nevertheless. He was in his familiar
posture of thought, his legs slightly apart, his felt hat pushed back,
stroking his goatee. But his clear gray eyes were troubled as they
sought hers, and she put her hand to her breast.
"Virginia," he said, "I fought for my country once, and I reckon I'm some
use yet awhile. It isn't right that I should idle here, while the South
needs me, Your Uncle Daniel is fifty-eight, and Colonel of a
Pennsylvania regiment.--Jinny, I have to go."
Virginia said nothing. It was in her blood as well as his. The Colonel
had left his young wife, to fight in Mexico; he had come home to lay
flowers on her grave. She knew that he thought of this; and, too, that
his heart was rent at leaving her. She put her hands on his shoulders,
and he stooped to kiss her trembling lips.
They walked out together to the summer-house, and stood watching the
glory of the light on the western hills. "Jinn," said the Colonel,
"I reckon you will have to go to your Aunt Lillian. It--it will be hard.
But I know that my girl can take care of herself. In case--in case I do
not come back, or occasion should arise, find Lige. Let him take you to
your Uncle Daniel. He is fond of you, and will be all alone in Calvert
House when the war is over. And I reckon that is all I have to say.
I won't pry into your heart, honey. If you love Clarence, marry him.
I like the boy, and I believe he will quiet down into a good man."
Virginia did not answer, but reached out for her father's hand and held
its fingers locked tight in her own. From the kitchen the sound of Ned's
voice rose in the still evening air.
"Sposin' I was to go to N' Orleans an' take sick and die,
Laik a bird into de country ma spirit would fly."
And after a while down the path the red and yellow of Mammy Easter's
bandanna was seen.
"Supper, Miss Jinny. Laws, if I ain't ramshacked de premises fo' you
bof. De co'n bread's gittin' cold."
That evening the Colonel and Virginia thrust a few things into her little
leather bag they had chosen together in London. Virginia had found a
cigar, which she hid until they went down to the porch, and there she
gave it to him; when he lighted the match she saw that his hand shook.
Half an hour later he held her in his arms at the gate, and she heard his
firm tread die in the dust of the road. The South had claimed him at
last.
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