Part 5

“There you go,” laughed Miller; “make it personal, that's the only way the average lover argues. I am speaking in general terms. Let me finish. Take two examples: first, the chap crazily in love, who faces life with the red rag of his infatuation--his girl. No parental objection, everything smooth, and a car-load of silverware--a clock for every room in the house. They start out on their honeymoon, doing the chief cities at the biggest hotels and the theatres in the three-dollar seats. They soon tire of themselves and lay it to the trip. Every day they rake away a handful of glamour from each other, till, when they reach home, they have come to the conclusion that they are only human, and not the highest order at that. For a while they have a siege of discontent, wondering where it's all gone. Finally, the man is forced to go about his work, and the woman gets to making things to go on the backs of chairs and trying to spread her trousseau over the next year, and they begin to court resignation. Now if they had not had the glamour attack they would have got down to business sooner, that's all, and they would have set a better example to other plungers. Now for the second illustration. Poverty on one side, boodle on the other; more glamour than in other case, because of the gulf between. They get married--they have to; they've inherited the stupid idea that the Lord is at the bottom of it and that the glamour is His smile. Like the other couple, their eyes are finally opened to the facts, and they begin to secretly wonder what it's all about; the one with the spondoolix wonders harder than the one who has none. If the man has the money, he will feel good at first over doing so much for his affinity; but if he has an eye for earthly values--and good business men have--there will be times when he will envy Jones, whose wife had as many rocks as Jones. Love and capital go together like rain and sunshine; they are productive of something. Then if the woman has the money and the man hasn't, there's tragedy--a slow cutting of throats. She is irresistibly drawn with the rest of the world into the thought that she has tied herself and her money to an automaton, for such men are invariably lifeless. They seem to lose the faculty of earning money--in any other way. And as for a proper title for the penniless young idiot that publicly advertises himself as worth enough, in himself, for a girl to sacrifice her money to live with him--well, the unabridged does not furnish it. Jack Ass in bill-board letters would come nearer to it than anything that occurs to me now. I'm not afraid to say it, for I know you'd never cause any girl to give up her fortune without knowing, at least, whether you could replace it or not.”

Alan rose and paced the room. “That,” he said, as he stood between the lace curtains at the window, against which the rain beat steadily--“that is why I feel so blue. I don't believe Colonel Barclay would ever forgive her, and I'd die before I'd make her lose a thing.”

“You are right,” returned Miller, relighting his cigar at the lamp, “and he'd cut her off without a cent. I know him. But what is troubling me is that you may not be benefited by my logic. Don't allow this to go any further. Let her alone from to-night on and you 'll find in a few months that you are resigned to it, just like the average widower who wants to get married six months after his loss. And when she is married and has a baby, she 'll meet you on the street and not care a rap whether her hat's on right or not. She 'll tell her husband all about it, and allude to you as her first, second, or third fancy, as the case may be. I have faith in your future, but you've got a long, rocky row to hoe, and a thing like this could spoil your usefulness and misdirect your talents. If I could see how you could profit by waiting I'd let your flame burn unmolested; but circumstances are agin us.”

“I'd already seen my duty,” said Alan, in a low tone, as he came away from the window. “I have an engagement with her later, and the subject shall be avoided.”

“Good man!” Miller's cigar was so short that he stuck the blade of his penknife through it that he might enjoy it to the end without burning his fingers. “That's the talk! Now I must mosey on down-stairs and dance with that Miss Fewclothes from Rome--the one with the auburn tresses, that says 'delighted' whenever she is spoken to.”

Alan went back to the window. The rain was still beating on it. For a long time he stood looking out into the blackness. The bad luck which had come to his father had been a blow to him; but its later offspring had the grim, cold countenance of death itself. He had never realized till now that Dolly Barclay was so much a part of his very life. For a moment he almost gave way to a sob that rose and struggled within him. He sat down again and clasped his hands before him in dumb self-pity. He told himself that Rayburn Miller was right, that only weak men would act contrary to such advice. No, it was over--all, all over.

VIII

FTER the dance Frank Hillhouse took Dolly home in one of the drenched and bespattered hacks. The Barclay residence was one of the best-made and largest in town. It was an old-style Southern frame-house, painted white, and had white-columned verandas on two sides. It was in the edge of the town, and had an extensive lawn in front and almost a little farm behind.

Dolly's mother had never forgotten that she was once a girl herself, and she took the most active interest in everything pertaining to Dolly's social life. On occasions like the one just described she found it impossible to sleep till her daughter returned, and then she slipped up-stairs, and made the girl tell all about it while she was disrobing. To-night she was more alert and wide-awake than usual. She opened the front door for Dolly and almost stepped on the girl's heels as she followed her up-stairs.

“Was it nice?” she asked.

“Yes, very,” Dolly replied. Reaching her room, she turned up the low-burning lamp, and, standing before a mirror, began to take some flowers out of her hair. Mrs. Barclay sat down on the edge of the high-posted mahogany bed and raised one of her bare feet and held it in her hand. She was a thin woman with iron-gray hair, and about fifty years of age. She looked as if she were cold; but, for reasons of her own, she was not willing for Dolly to remark it.

“Who was there?” she asked.

“Oh, everybody.”

“Is that so? I thought a good many would stay away because it was a bad night; but I reckon they are as anxious to go as we used to be. Then you all did have the hacks?”

“Yes, they had the hacks.” There was a pause, during which one pair of eyes was fixed rather vacantly on the image in the mirror; the other pair, full of impatient inquiry, rested alternately on the image and its maker.

“I don't believe you had a good time,” broke the silence, in a rising, tentative tone.

“Yes, I did, mother.”

“Then what's the matter with you?” Mrs. Barclay's voice rang with impatience. “I never saw you act like you do to-night, never in my life.”

“I didn't know anything was wrong with me, mother.”

“You act queer; I declare you do,” asserted Mrs. Barclay. “You generally have a lot to say. Have you and Frank had a falling out?”

Dolly gave her shoulders a sudden shrug of contempt.

“No, we got along as well as we ever did.”

“I thought maybe he was a little mad because you wouldn't dance to-night; but surely he's got enough sense to see that you oughtn't to insult brother Dill-beck that way when he's visiting our house and everybody knows what he thinks about dancing.”

“No, he thought I did right about it,” said Dolly.

“Then what in the name of common-sense is the matter with you, Dolly? You can' t pull the wool over my eyes, and you needn't try it.”

Dolly faced about suddenly.

“I reckon you 'll sit there all night unless I tell you all about it,” she said, sharply. “Mother, Alan Bishop was there.”

“You don't say!”

“Yes, and asked me to let him take me to church to-morrow evening.”

“Oh, he did?”

“Yes, and as I didn't want father to insult him, I--”

“You told him what your pa said?”

“No, I just told him father didn't want me to receive him any more. Heaven knows, that was enough.”

“Well, that was the best thing for you to do.” Mrs. Barclay took a deep breath, as if she were inhaling a delicious perfume. “It's much better than to have him plunge in here some day and have your father break out like he does in his rough way. What did Alan say?”

“He said very little; but he looked it. You ought to have seen him. Frank came up just about that time and invited me to have some ice-cream, and I had to leave him. He was as white as a sheet. He had made an engagement with me to sit out a dance, and he didn't come in the room again till that dance was called, and then he didn't even mention it. He acted so peculiarly, I could see it was nearly killing him, but he wouldn't let me bring up the subject again. I came near doing it; but he always steered round it.”

“He's a sensible young man,” declared Mrs. Barclay. “Any one can see that by looking at him. He's not responsible for his father's foolhardy venture, but it certainly leaves him in a bad fix as a marrying man. He's had bad luck, and he must put up with the consequences. There are plenty of girls who have no money or prospects who would be glad to have him, but--”

“Mother,” broke in Dolly, as if she had been listening to her own troubled thoughts rather than her mother's words; “he didn't act as if he wanted to see me alone. The other couples who had engagements to talk during that dance were sitting in windows and out-of-the-way corners, but he kept me right where I was, and was as carefully polite as if we had just been introduced. I was sorry for him and mad at the same time. I could have pulled his ears.”

“He's sensible, very sensible,” said Mrs. Barclay, in a tone of warm admiration. “A man like that ought to get along, and I reckon he will do well some day.”

“But, mother,” said Dolly, her rich, round voice rising like a wave and breaking in her throat, “he may never think about me any more.”

“Well, that really would be best, dear, under the circumstances.”

“Best?” Dolly blurted out. “How can you say that, when--when--”

“Dolly, you are not really foolish about him, are you?” Mrs. Barclay's face dropped into deeper seriousness.

Dolly looked away and was silent for a moment; then she faltered: “I don't know, mother, I--I'm afraid if I keep on feeling like I do now I 'll never get over it.”

“Ah, but you 'll not keep on feeling like you do now,” consoled the older woman. “Of course, right now, just after seeing how hard he took it, you will kind o' sympathize with him and want to help him; but that will all pass away. I remember when I was about your age I had a falling out with Will Despree--a young man my father didn't like because his grandfather had been an overseer. And, do you know, I thought I would actually kill myself. I refused to eat a bite and threatened to run away with Will. To this day I really don't know what I would have done if your grandfather hadn't scared him away with a shot-gun. Will kept writing notes to me. I was afraid to answer them, but my father got hold of one and went after him on a fast horse. Will's family heard what was up and they kept him out in the swamp for a few days, and then they sent him to Texas. The whole Despree family took it up and talked scand'lous about us.”

“And you soon got over it, mother?” asked Dolly, almost in a tone of dismay.

“Well,” said Mrs. Barclay, reflectively, “Will acted the fool so terribly; he wasn't out in Texas three months before he sent back a marked paper with an article in it about his engagement to the daughter of a rich man who, we found out afterwards, used to keep a livery-stable; then I reckon hardly any girl would keep caring for a boy when his folks was telling such lies about her family.”

Dolly was staring studiously at the speaker.

“Mother,” she asked, “don't you believe in real love?”

Mrs. Barclay laughed as if highly amused. “I believe in a different sort to the puppy love I had for that boy. Then after that there was another young man that I thought more of, if anything, than I did of Will; but he was as poor as Job's turkey, and my folks was all crazy for me 'n' your pa, who I'd never seen, to get married. I held out against the idea, just like you are doing with Frank, I reckon; but when your pa come with his shiny broadcloth coat and spotted silk vest--no, it was satin, I think, with red spots on it--and every girl in town was crazy to catch him, and there was no end of reports about the niggers he owned and his high connections--well, as I say, it wasn't a week before I was afraid he'd see Joe Tinsley and hear about me 'n' him. My father was in for the match from the very jump, and so was your pa's folks. He put up at our house with his nigger servant and didn't want to go about town much. I reckon I was pleased to have him pick me out, and so we soon fixed it up. Lordy, he only had to mention Joe Tinsley to me after we got married to make me do anything he wanted. To this day he throws him up to me, for Joe never did amount to anything. He tried to borrow money from your pa after you was born. The neighbors had to feed his children.”

“But you loved father, didn't you?” Dolly breathed, in some relief over what she thought was coming.

“Well, I can' t say I did,” said Mrs. Barclay. “We had a terrible time getting used to one another's ways. You see, he'd waited a good while, and was some older than I was. After a while, though, we settled down, and now I'm awful glad I let my father manage for me. You see, what your pa had and what my father settled on me made us comfortable, and if a couple is that it's a sight more than the pore ones are.”

Dolly stood before her mother, close enough to touch her. Her face wore an indescribable expression of dissatisfaction with what she had heard.

“Mother, tell me one thing,” she said. “Did you ever let either of those boys--the two that you didn't marry, I mean--kiss you?”

Mrs. Barclay stared up at her daughter for an instant and then her face broke into a broad smile of genuine amusement. She lowered her head to her knee and laughed out.

“Dolly Barclay, you are _such_ a fool!” she said, and then she laughed again almost immoderately, her face in her lap.

“I know what _that_ means,” said Dolly, in high disgust. “Mother, I don't think you can do me any good. You'd better go to bed.”

Mrs. Barclay rose promptly.

“I think I'd better, too,” she said. “It makes your pa awful mad for me to sit up this way. I don't want to hear him rail out like he always does when he catches me at it.”

After her mother had gone, Dolly sat down on her bed. “She never was in love,” she told herself. “Never, never, never! And it is a pity. She never could have talked that way if she had really loved anybody as much as--” But Dolly did not finish what lay on her tongue. However, when she had drawn the covers up over her the cold tears rose in her eyes and rolled down on her pillow as she thought of Alan Bishop's brave and dignified suffering.

“Poor fellow!” she said. “Poor, dear Alan!”

IX

HERE is a certain class of individuals that will gather around a man in misfortune, and it differs very little, if it differs at all, from the class that warms itself in the glow of a man' s prosperity. It is made up of human failures, in the first instance, congratulating themselves on not being alone in bad luck; in the second, desirous of seeing how a fortunate man would look and act and guessing at his feelings. From the appearance of Bishop's home for the first fortnight after his return from Atlanta, you would have thought that some one was seriously ill in the house or that some general favorite had returned to the family after a long absence.

Horses were hitched to the fence from the front gate all the way round to the side entrance. The mountain people seemed to have left their various occupations to subtly enjoy the spectacle of a common man like themselves who had reached too far after forbidden fruit and lay maimed and torn before them. It was a sort of feast at which the baser part of their spiritual natures was fed, and, starved as they were, it tasted good. Many of them had never aspired to bettering their lot even with small ventures such as buying Jersey cows at double the value of common cattle when it was reported that the former gave four times as much milk and ate less, and to these cautious individuals Bishop's visible writhing was sweet confirmation of their own judgment.

Their disapproval of the old man's effort to hurry Providence could not have been better shown than in the failure of them all to comment on the rascally conduct of the Atlanta lawyer; they even chuckled over that part of the incident. To their minds Perkins was a sort of far-off personification of a necessary evil--who, like the devil himself, was evidently created to show mortals their limitations. They were not going to say what the lawyer had a right to do or should avoid doing, for they didn't pretend to know; but they did know what their old neighbor ought to have done, and if they didn't tell him so to his face they would let him see it by their actions. Yes, Bishop was a different thing altogether. He belonged to them and theirs. He led in their meetings, prayed in public, and had till now headed the list in all charitable movements.

The Reverend Charles B. Dole, a tall, spare man of sixty, who preached the first, second, third, and fourth Sundays of each month in four different meetinghouses within a day's ride of Bishop's, came around as the guest of the farm-house as often as his circuit would permit. He was called the “fightin' preacher,” because he had had several fearless hand-to-hand encounters with certain moonshiners whose conduct he had ventured to call ungodly, because unlawful.

On the second Saturday after Bishop's mishap, as Dole was to preach the next day at Rock Crest meetinghouse, he rode up as usual and turned his horse into the stable and fed him with his own hands. Then he joined Abner Daniel on the veranda. Abner had seen him ride up and purposely buried his head in his newspaper to keep from offering to take the horse, for Abner did not like the preacher “any to hurt,” as he would have put it.

Dole did not care much for Abner either. They had engaged in several doctrinal discussions in which the preacher had waxed furious over some of Daniel's views, which he described as decidedly unorthodox. Daniel had kept his temper beautifully and had the appearance of being amused through it all, and this Dole found harder to forgive than anything Abner had said.

“You all have had some trouble, I heer, sence I saw you last,” said the preacher as he sat down and began to wipe his perspiring brow with a big handkerchief.

“Well, I reckon it mought be called that,” Abner replied, as he carefully folded his newspaper and put it into his coat-pocket. “None of us was expectin' of it an' it sorter bu'sted our calculations. Alf had laid out to put new high-back benches in Rock Crest, an' new lamps an' one thing another, an' it seems to me”--Abner wiped his too facile mouth--“like I heerd 'im say one day that you wasn't paid enough fer yore thunder, an' that he'd stir around an' see what could be done.” Abner's eyes twinkled. “But lawsy me! I reckon ef he kin possibly raise the scads to pay the tax on his investment next yeer he 'll do all the Lord expects.”

“Huh, I reckon!” grunted Dole, irritated as usual by Abner's double meaning. “I take it that the Lord hain't got much to do with human speculations one way or other.”

“Ef I just had that scamp that roped 'im in before me a minute I'd fix 'im,” said Abner. “Do you know what denomination Perkins belongs to?”

“No, I don't,” Dole blurted out, “an' what's more, I don't care.”

“Well, I acknowledge it sorter interests me,” went on our philosopher, in an inscrutable tone, “beca'se, brother Dole, you kin often trace a man' s good ur bad doin' s to his belief in Bible matters. Maybe you don't remember Jabe Lynan that stold Thad Wilson's stump-suckin' hoss an' was ketched an' put up. I was at the court-house in Darley when he received his sentence. His wife sent me to 'im to carry his pipe an' one thing or other--a pair o' socks an' other necessary tricks--a little can o' lye-soap, fer one thing. She hadn't the time to go, as she said she had a patch o' young corn to hoe out. I found 'im as happy as ef he was goin' off on a excursion. He laughed an' 'lowed it ud be some time 'fore he got back, an' I wondered what could 'a' made him so contented, so I made some inquiries on that line. I found that he was a firm believer in predestination, an' that what was to be was foreordained. He said that he firmly believed he was predestinated to go to the coal-mines fer hoss-stealin', an' that life was too short to be kickin' agin the Lord's way o' runnin' matters; besides, he said, he'd heerd that they issued a plug o'.tobacco a week to chawin' prisoners, an' he could prove that he was one o' that sort ef they'd look how he'd ground his jaw-teeth down to the gums.”

“Huh!” grunted Dole again, his sharp, gray eyes on Abner's face, as if he half believed that some of his own theories were being sneered at. It was true that he, being a Methodist, had not advocated a belief in predestination, but Abner Daniel had on more than one occasion shown a decided tendency to bunch all stringent religious opinions together and cast them down as out of date. When in doubt in a conversation with Abner, the preacher assumed a coldness on the outside that was often not consistent with the fires within him. “I don't see what all that's got to do with brother Bishop's mistake,” he said, frigidly, as he leaned back in his chair.

“It sets me to wonderin' what denomination Perkins belongs to, that's all,” said Abner, with another smile. “I know in reason he's a big Ike in some church in Atlanta, fer I never knowed a lawyer that wasn't foremost in that way o' doin' good. I 'll bet a hoe-cake he belongs to some highfalutin crowd o' worshippers that kneel down on saft cushions an' believe in scoopin' in all they kin in the Lord's name, an' that charity begins at home. I think that myse'f, brother Dole, fer thar never was a plant as hard to git rooted as charity is, an' a body ought to have it whar they kin watch it close. It 'll die a heap o' times ef you jest look at it, an' it mighty nigh always has bad soil ur a drougth to contend with.”

Just then Pole Baker, who has already been introduced to the reader, rode up to the fence and hitched his horse. He nodded to the two men on the veranda, and went round to the smoke-house to get a piece of bacon Bishop had promised to sell him on credit.

“Huh!” Dole grunted, and he crossed his long legs and swung his foot up and down nervously. He had the look of a man who was wondering why such insufferable bores as Abner should so often accompany a free dinner. He had never felt drawn to the man, and it irritated him to think that just when his mental faculties needed rest, Abner always managed to introduce the very topics which made it necessary for him to keep his wits about him.