CHAPTER II.

STEADFAST MARY.

It was late in November. The screen of foliage which hid the villa from the road had grown thin, changing to all gay colours, and dropping leaf by leaf. Old Gerald's health had not improved. The clear autumnal airs had failed to invigorate his fever-worn system, or brace it into vigour. They only chilled him, and forced him to keep his room.

The light was fading out of a grey and lifeless afternoon--one of those days when all things are possible, rain, frost, snow, or even a revulsion into the sunshine of a last brief remnant of St. Martin's summer, and yet nothing happens. Gerald sat by the window in his easy chair, wrapped in a thick dressing-gown and buried under many rugs. His letters lay at his elbow unread, and the _New Orleans Picayune_ was on his lap, but he was too listless to look into its contents. His eyes were turned towards the road, and he watched with as much impatience as his torpid faculties were capable of feeling.

"There she is at last!" he muttered after a while. "Glad! She is all the company I have now, or can expect while I am kept indoors. Susan and Judith don't count in that way, even if they tried to be agreeable, which they don't. The one is for ever bothering about my negroes and my soul, the other about my money. What have I done that they should imagine they may puzzle their foolish heads over me and my affairs, or wag their cackling tongues. I am sick, and want nursing, so they take me for a child? Think of me, who consult no one, being advised by _them!_ But never mind, here is little Mary. She is always good company, and she never bothers."

"But who is the fellow walking with her? Big and strapping. Fair hair, whiskers and moustache--not bad to look at, but seems most unnecessarily eager in his attentions. Wonder who he is. Carrying her music? Very proper; but he need not linger so long before letting go her hand. Mary shouldn't let him--looks particular--the major would not like that."

Presently Mary entered the room. She was flushed, or perhaps the air had heightened her complexion and brightened her eyes, which shone like stars; and there were smiles lingering about her lips, in wait, as it were, to break forth again on the first pretext.

"Your walk has done you good," said Gerald. "Where have you been? I have been wearying for you to come home; but now one sees you, it is impossible to grudge your short constitutional, you are so brightened up by it. I wish Considine was here to see you."

"I have been at choir-practising. I promised to take the solo in Sunday's anthem, and have been trying it over. The booming of the organ through the empty church rouses, one, I think. I generally feel brighter after it, and that may account for my looking so cheerful as you say."

"And who is the gentleman who carried home your music?"

"That is Mr. Selby, our organist. A splendid player. If you had not been such an invalid, you would have known both his playing and himself ere now."

"It would seem that you know him very well; and to see you walking together one would have said that he knows you very well too. You appear quite intimate, and yet I have never seen him here."

"No. Susan will not let him be invited to the house. She says his is not a recognized profession. As if a successful musician were not better than a bungling doctor or notary! It has something to do with the _line_ which she says must be drawn--between wholesale and retail, for instance--if Montreal is to have a Society. A ridiculous line, it seems to me, which excludes many wealthy and accomplished people as traders, while it lets in poor Stephen and his wife, with her superfluous h's, because his little business in needles and pins is wholesale, seeing that he never sells less than a thousand at a time."

"Mrs. Stephen is my sister-in-law, and may do with her h's what she pleases. It is not her fault if she was born in the British metropolis, and if Stephen is not in opulent circumstances, it is just because it has so happened. I have known many high-toned families who were but in a small way _pecooniarily_ speaking. I am surprised to hear you run Stephen and his family down, though I confess I have been disappointed myself in his son Ralph."

"I don't run them down; but why should they be so particular about others? It was Mrs. Stephen who said to Susan that an organist wasn't 'genteel,'--Mrs. Stephen, who doesn't know one tune from another--and so Mr. Selby has never been asked to the house. And then Judith chimed in with her 'higher grounds.' She says that good music is a snare and device of the High Church party, and that you got on very well without it long ago in the old church at Stoke-upon-Severn. A funny church it must have been."

"So it was, and I reckon you would not have liked it. The village joiner and the bellows mender played the clarionet and the bassoon in a little loft over the squire's pew, while the blacksmith's daughter sang the hymns, and the schoolmaster as clerk said the responses out loud before the people. But the world has changed since then. Yes! I daresay an organist might do as well to invite as anybody else. But what does it matter? What do you want with an organist? You have no organ."

"I like to be able to invite my friends just as other people do. If you knew him, Gerald, you would like him."

"I dare say. There are many people one would like if one knew them. Yet if one does not, it seems of little consequence, there are so many others. If you lived in Natchez, now, you would not see much of your Canadian friends. You would make friends down there, and very high-toned and elegant you would find them."

"Natchez, Gerald? What should I be doing there?"

"Doing? Living, of course; surrounded by every elegance that money and the best society can secure. If I live and get well, it is my intention to carry you back with me, and make you mistress of the Beaulieu estate--de Bully they call it for short. In case I do not, and I can see the doctor has not much hope of my recovery, I have willed the place and all my property to you. Don't stare, Mary. It is so. I feel it a duty to provide a good mistress for those helpless creatures who are dependent on me, and you, I am satisfied, will be that. I have tried Ralph, as you know, and have found him unfit to take my place. You are the only other member of the family who could go there. You will marry, and the plantation will prosper. Treat the poor creatures kindly, Mary. But I know you will, and Considine is an excellent manager. His place adjoins ours. You will have the finest estate for miles on that part of the river."

"Oh! This seems very strange to me."

"You will get used to it in time. But to tell you the truth, I did not think the idea would be altogether new to you. I did not think Considine would have been so backward. He must be hard hit to be so diffident of his success in taking a girl's fancy. Has he said nothing to you?"

"It would have been strange in Major Considine to have divulged your testamentary intentions. You surely do not think he would speculate to me about your chances of recovery, or what you would do with your property. I should have stopped him at once if he had mooted the subject, you may be sure."

"I did not suppose that he had divulged my intentions, but I think it is about time that he had declared his own. After visiting here so constantly all through the summer, and keeping you singing by the hour to him downstairs in the drawing-room, he has surely made himself understood. Still, I wonder he has not spoken. Not that I have a right to complain, he has declared himself plainly enough to _me_, or you may be sure I would have put a stop to his visits long ago. Still I wonder at his backwardness. Where are you running to, Mary? Has he said nothing?"

"I want to take off my things," said Mary, her face aflame with blushes.

"Tell me before you go. What has he said? Tell me! There is his ring at the front door. I must speak to him."

"I don't know. But better say nothing," cried Mary in evident confusion, escaping from the room.

Gerald would have recalled her, but the major's heavy step was already audible on the stairs. He could only throw himself back in his chair with an impatient snort.

"Colonel!" said Considine, entering, "I come to make you my _adieux_"--'adoos' is how he pronounced it, the Major was certainly not French. "What orders for Taine at the plantation? Any commands for any one down there? I shall be pleased to be your messenger. I see by the Memphis paper there was a slight touch of frost the other night, so the sickly season is over, and I can safely go home to look after my affairs. They want looking into, I reckon, after five months' absence. I have to thank you for the very pleasant summer I have put in here."

"Do you mean it, major? Going right off? I have reckoned on your being here till the New Year."

"The call to go home has come sudden, colonel, but I reckon I had best obey it."

"And what about our plan to join the plantations?"

"I'm agreeable, colonel--anxious I should say; but if the lady ain't, what can I do?"

"You don't know, major, till you try. I reckon a sister of mine ain't just like a ripe persimmon, to drop in a man's mouth before he shakes the tree."

"Shakes the tree, colonel? There ain't no man ever shook the tree harder than I did. I shook in both my shoes for a mortal hour before I could steady my voice--that shook too--enough to say what I wanted. All the time I was trying, the lady was diverting herself with her singing. French songs, and I-talian songs, full of all kind of rare fandangoes, like a mocking bird in a cherry tree. I couldn't get a word in endways for ever so long, and when I did, at last, she just stopped and looked at me out of her eyes. And when I got through, she said 'Oh! Mr. Considine, it's all a mistake. You have misunderstood, and I don't understand. I am quite sure I cannot say what you desire, so we will suppose that you have not asked me to, and that nothing has been said at all, and we will agree never to recur to the subject.' And then she asked me if I did not think the last movement in the song she had been singing very effective, and the bravura passage at the end powerfully written. By-and-by I got away. You may suppose she did not play a great deal more music, and that I had got about enough for that time. I ain't a widower, colonel, as you know; I never was refused before, and I never backed out of an engagement, so you may say that I have no experience in these matters; but it appears to me that the young lady knows her own mind, and there is no use in my speaking to her again."

"But she didn't know about the joining our plantations then. I had only just done explaining that to her when you came in, and she ran out, which shows that she ain't indifferent to the idea, as who in their senses could be? The two will make a mighty pretty property, and you and Mary will look well at the head of it, and raise a fine family to come after you. She did not know she was heir to my property when she took you down that time. Ha, ha, major! It makes me laugh to think of it. You that so long have been boss of the range, and had only to beckon to fetch any gal in all the country--you to come all the way to Canada to be took down by a gal that didn't know she had a dollar to her name!"

"Sir, the subject of your jests is not a pleasant one. Let us pass on."

"I ask your pardon, major. No offence was intended; but if you will speak to Mary now, I am willing to bet any money her answer will be different. A man of experience should not mind every word a young woman says, when it is about marrying. It is the one time in life she is let have her head, and we must not blame her for taking it, just at first. Trust me, she has thought better of it already. Try again."

"It would be useless, colonel."

"Don't give in, sir! If the gal and the plantation are to your liking, that is."

"I think a mighty deal of the lady, sir; and would be fain to repeat my offer, even if she were as much without fortune as she believed herself to be last night; but I do not see my way to doing so after what has passed between us, the more so that now my fortune--a mighty neat one though it be--will count for less than before, seeing she knows now how well you have provided for her."

"I believe that will influence her the other way. However, it is reasonable you should want to halt and take breath before returning to the attack. This is a disappointment to me, but I won't cry beat yet, if you are still minded to persevere. Let me speak to her, and I will write to you. Now the ice has been broken between you, you will be able to take up the subject by letter." Considine shortly took his leave, and Gerald awaited the return of Mary, who did not appear till Cato had been sent to hammer on her chamber door and request her presence.

"Is this true," said Gerald, when she at length entered the room, "which I hear of you? Have you really gone and said 'No' to Considine's proposal? Do you know that he owns a hundred and fifty head of the likeliest niggers in all the Mississippi Valley, besides land and sundries?--nigh on two hundred thousand dollars, and no debts. What do you expect to be able to catch if Considine ain't good enough for you?"

"I didn't say he was not good enough. He deserves a better wife than I could make him, and I believe he will have no difficulty in finding her."

"But it is in you he thinks he has found her, Mary! Don't be foolish, you are not likely ever to get a better offer, or another half as good. The man is steady and well off, a kind man and a perfect gentleman. What more would you have?"

"I do not want more, Gerald! But then I do not want--him."

"What is your objection to him? Is it his appearance, or his temper, or what? Is he not passably well-looking?"

"I would almost call him handsome."

"Does he not succeed in making himself sufficiently agreeable to you? I can assure you, at any rate, that you have succeeded in being agreeable to him. He says he would be fain to get you if you had not a cent to your name. Can a man say more than that?"

"I do not know that he can."

"Then what is your fault to him?"

"I find no fault with him. On the contrary----"

"Then why won't you marry him?"

"Because I could not like him in that way."

"What can a girl like you know about the marrying way?"

"I know that I could not marry Mr. Considine."

"Why? Is there some one else?"

Mary's face flushed hotly and her eyes fell.

"Ha! Have I caught you? You are engaged already? Why did you never tell? Surely you might have trusted your big brother. You never saw me till the other day, it is true, but we have been fast friends for twelve months now, have we not, Mary? Why did you never tell me?" And he drew her towards him as he spoke, and kissed her on the forehead. "Think I feel no interest in my future heir?"

"Because, Gerald, you do not know him. How could I tell you?"

"Tell me now, then, dear. Who is he?"

"You must find out," she answered with a watery smile and changing colour. "Girls are not expected to say such things, because they cannot."

"You say I do not know him? Have I seen him?"

"Yes."

"Do I know him by sight? Or have I seen him recently?"

"Yes, very recently indeed--as recently as could be."

"What? Then--you do not say? But it cannot be, Mary?"

There was a self-convicted look in Mary's face which pleaded guilty to the unspoken indictment.

"Do you really mean--but no, you cannot mean your friend the organist?"

Mary bowed her head in silence and looked expectantly in her brother's face, till his rising colour and the gathering frown left no doubt as to his reception of her tidings; then she removed her eyes with a heavy sigh and let them fall on the carpet.

"You cannot mean it, Mary? You!--my father's daughter!--my sister!--to engage yourself to marry a kind of fiddler!"

"He is _not_ a fiddler, in your sense, Gerald, although he can play the violin, and indeed most other instruments. He is a cultured person, and has his university degree--Bachelor of Music--while few of those who try to look down on him have had the chance even to get plucked for one, having never gone to college at all."

"He plays tunes at any rate in a church loft on Sundays for a living. Is that a fit occupation for the man who would marry my sister?"

"Remember the great composers, Gerald. More than one of them was a chapelmaster, which is just an organist."

"The great fiddlesticks! If you had seen them in their lifetime in their frowzy little German houses and dirty linen, with their wives cooking their dinner, such as it was, for there was little enough at times to put in the pot, you would think less of their greatness. What good is the greatness which is not found out till after you are dead? A great fortune! That is the only greatness a sensible woman will marry to."

"Shame, Gerald! You do not mean what you say. You have been married yourself, and I know you loved and honoured your wife. Do you mean now to say that your wife was a fool because she married you when you were not rich? Or is it that she was mercenary and married you for your money?"

"Tush! Mary. You never saw poor Jeanne, so you cannot speak about her. The beautiful darling!" Gerald's voice grew husky here, and there was some coughing before he could resume.

"No! She was not mercenary, and she was not a fool. She married me when I was a poor man because we loved one another, and she did not think about money. But if she had, it was not an unwise thing, as it turned out, which she did in marrying me, for I managed her property successfully, and more than doubled its value."

"Then why will you doubt that another woman--and she your own sister--may love as well, or that the man she intrusts her future to, may be as well able as you were to take care of it? Mr. Selby has a great many pupils, and can very well maintain a wife."

"A wife, I dare say, but not my sister. It is true my property which I intend you to have is far more than Jeanne had when she married me; but I was able to take care of her and of what she had, and the property throve in my hands. An organist is different. What could such as he do with a gang of unruly niggers? It needs a clear business head and a strong arm to make plantation property pay."

"He does not aspire to your property, Gerald. He does not know of it, and with his feelings I am not sure that he would consent to become a slave-owner."

"Not consent, eh? Never fear. His consent will not be asked, for mine shall never be given to his owning my negroes. Slave-owning forsooth! No. Let him manage his chest of whistles. I have no right and no wish to dictate to you, though I would dearly like to see you marry Considine; but at least I can make sure, and I will, that your insidious organ-grinder shall never benefit a cent by my money, I promise you that, and I shall alter my will accordingly."