Part 5

“I’ll go, Miss Broughton,” Caleb said, though in his heart he dreaded it; he had a proud man’s aversion to meeting discourtesy from those who despised his poverty, and he had observed the red when it stained Kitty’s cheek. But, after all, it was a small matter, he reflected; to one of Caleb’s habits of thought the social part of life was a small matter. Yet it is the small things which prick until the blood comes.

VII

A WEEK from that day Caleb Trench addressed a crowd of backwoodsmen and some of the Eshcol farmers at the town hall at Cresset’s Corners. Even if a reporter had not been there, it would have passed by word of mouth all over the county, and, later, through the State.

There are moments when the eloquence of man consists in telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The fact that the countrymen had not heard it for nearly fifteen years clothed it with spell-binding powers. For half an hour Caleb Trench talked to them with extraordinary simplicity and directness; when he had finished they knew how they were governed and why. He had the power of making his argument clear to the humblest, and yet convincing to the most learned, which is the power that men call persuasion. In that half-hour they found that they had raised up the Golden Calf themselves, and that it had smitten them. Jacob Eaton suddenly appeared like a huge spider whose golden web had immeshed the entire State, while they themselves were hung in it like wounded flies. Yet, yesterday, Jacob Eaton had been a young man of fine family and immense influence. That night they went home disputing and lay awake, in the agonies of reflection, trying to find a way to withdraw themselves from his investments; that they could not find it involved them in still deeper distress. All this while, the figure of Caleb Trench began to stand out sharply and suddenly, like the silhouette thrown on the sheet by the lamp of the stereopticon.

He made no effort to keep himself before them; having told them the truth, he acted as if he had performed his mission and went about his own business, which was chiefly, just then, keeping shop and reading law only at night. The summer trade was on, the roads were good, and customers more plentiful than clients.

Thursday night was the date of Kitty Broughton’s ball; Wednesday, of the previous week, brought Caleb his first client. The two events afterwards fixed many things in his memory, for at this time he was trying to forget that Miss Royall had ever sat in his old armchair by the stove. The peculiarly haunting qualities of some individuals, who are not spooks, is past explanation. Caleb felt that there was no more pricking misery than to see eternally one face and one figure in his favorite chair, when neither of them could ever possibly belong there, and it was to his interest to forget them. There should be, by the way, a method for exorcising such ghosts and compelling their rightful owners to keep them labeled in a locked cabinet instead of projecting them upon the innocent and the defenseless. Caleb’s method consisted, at present, in turning the old chair upside down in the closet back of the kitchen, which ought to have discouraged any self-respecting ghost, yet Wednesday morning he got it out again and put it reverently in its place, with a sheepish feeling of having committed a crime in trying to dishonor it.

It was after the ceremony of restoration that Juniper arrived with a long face. He had been temporarily reconciled to Aunt Charity and was shouldering her chief responsibility, her son Lysander.

“De jedge, he sent me down ter see yo’, suh,” Juniper explained, twisting his battered hat as usual. “I’se in a po’erful lot ob trouble an’ so ez de ole woman.”

Caleb moved a little impatiently. “The silver teapot?” he asked dryly.

“No,” said Juniper, without embarrassment, “no, suh; de folks up ter de Corners ez gwine ter hab Lysander ’rested. I reckon dey hez had him ’rested a’ready. Dey says he dun stole der chickens on Monday. Et wuz de dark ob de moon, suh, an’ dat make it seem ez if dey got er case. De jedge, he tole me ter come ter yo’.”

Caleb felt that Judge Hollis was enjoying his first case. He almost heard the shouts of Homeric laughter from that inner office. “You’ll have to prove that he didn’t steal the chickens,” he said. “In the first place, who are the people?”

“Mr. Todd’s folks,” Juniper replied, “an’ dey ses et wuz two pullets an’ er cockerel.”

Trench knew where Aaron Todd lived and recalled, less vividly, the presence of a large chicken-yard. “How do they suppose he could have carried them off undiscovered, even at night?” Caleb argued. “If I remember where the chicken-yard is, you could hear a commotion among the fowls at any time, particularly at night. It will be a simple matter, Juniper, when we prove an alibi.”

Juniper rubbed the back of his head thoughtfully. “Dat’s so, suh,” he replied; “I ’low dat I don’ wanter pay his fine, an’ Charity, she don’; she sho’ won’t pay et bekase she say I oughter, an’ ef Lysander goes up fo’ sixty days an’ works on de roads, he ain’t gwine ter do anodder stroke all de year; dat’s Lysander; I knows ’im.”

“What time do they say the chickens were stolen?”

“Monday mawnin’, ’bout two o’clock.” Uncle Juniper rubbed his sleeve thoughtfully across his forehead.

“Then we must prove an alibi,” said Caleb, swinging around in his chair to view his client more directly. “The point is clear; where was Lysander at two o’clock Monday morning?”

“I specks he wus up dar, suh,” said Juniper cheerfully. “He ain’t let on ter me dat he wuz anywhere else.”

Caleb got up abruptly and threw open the door into the shop; he had seen Colonel Royall coming. Then he dashed off a note to Aaron Todd, enclosing a cheque for the two pullets and the cockerel, and gave it to Juniper.

“Take that up to the Corners,” he said briefly, “and I think Lysander will get off without arrest, but tell him if he steals any more I’ll thrash him.”

“Yes, suh,” said Juniper, expectant but unbelieving.

Later, however, when Todd took the money and let Lysander off, he was convinced, and, like all new converts, he became a zealot, and went about telling of the miracles wrought by the new lawyer. Thus did Caleb’s fame go abroad in the byways and alleys, which is, after all, the road to celebrity.

Meanwhile, Colonel Royall, very inconsiderately, sat in Diana’s chair. He had heard of the speech at Cresset’s Corners, and knew that Trench was supporting Yarnall for the Democratic nomination. Yet the colonel admired Trench, the force of whose convictions was already bearing fruit.

Eight weeks before, Colonel Royall had made a formal call on Caleb to thank him for his courtesy and service to Diana. He was a Southern gentleman of the old school, and he had done it without allowing even a drop of condescension in his manner. Moreover, he liked Trench and was trying to put together the modesty of the man, who had colored at his acknowledgments, with the incendiary ability that could rouse and hold a meeting of backwoodsmen on a subject that was as foreign to their understanding as it was alarming. Admitted, for the first time, into the inner office, the colonel gazed about with almost as much curiosity as Diana, and he drew conclusions not unlike hers, but more pregnant with the truth.

The colonel’s own face in repose was infinitely sad, yet when he spoke and laughed his expression was almost happy. But he had been twenty years turning the key on his inner self, and the result was an exterior that reminded an observer of an alabaster chalice in which the throbbing pulse of life lay clasped and all but crystallized. His face in repose had almost the sweetness of a woman’s, and only when the blue eyes blazed with sudden wrath was there ever cause to fear him. That he was a dreamer of dreams was apparent at a glance; that he could keep an unhappy secret twenty years seemed more improbable. He leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands on top of the stout hickory stick he carried.

“Mr. Trench,” he said slowly, with his Southern drawl, “I congratulate you on your success in politics.”

Caleb turned red. He was aware of the universal prejudice against his politics in Colonel Royall’s class. “Thank you, Colonel,” he said formally, rising to look for glasses in his cupboard. “I can’t offer you fine old wine, sir, but I have some Kentucky whiskey that Judge Hollis sent me.”

“After the speech at Cresset’s?” The corners of the colonel’s mouth twitched.

Caleb poured out the whiskey and handed the glass to his guest. “You know the judge well, sir,” he remarked, and his composure under the jest won upon the colonel.

He tasted the whiskey with the air of a connoisseur. “In Virginia, Mr. Trench, we should make this into juleps,” he said appreciatively; “the judge was raised in the Kentucky mountains and he knows a good thing when he sees it. I read the report of your speech, sir, and I admired it, but”--the colonel let his hand fall a little heavily on the arm of the chair where Diana’s elbow had rested,--he little knew the enormity of his action--“if I thought it was all true I should have to change my coat. I don’t--but I believe you do.”

“Thank you,” said Trench quietly, “I do.”

“Very good, sir,” said Colonel Royall; “then you did right, but you’ve made more enemies than you could shake a stick at. Jacob Eaton’s my cousin, a young man yet, but mighty clever, and I reckon he’ll remember all you said. There isn’t any call for me to resent things for Jacob! No, sir, I honor you for your courage, if those are your convictions, but Yarnall can’t be elected here.”

“I think he can, Colonel,” Caleb replied, unmoved. The lines about his mouth straightened a little and there was a glint in his gray eyes; otherwise his composure was unruffled.

Colonel Royall set down his empty glass and waved aside the proffered bottle. “No more, sir, it’s too good to be safe; like most fine things, a little goes a long way. What makes you think you can nominate Yarnall? Of course you can’t elect a Republican, so I see your point in trying to influence the Democrats. By gum, sir, it’s the first time it’s been attempted, and it’s knocked the organization into splinters; they’re standing around waiting to see what you’ll do next!” The colonel laughed softly.

“They’ll nominate Yarnall and they’ll elect him,” said Caleb; “Aylett can’t get two votes out of ten. I’m sorry to go against your candidate, Colonel,” he added, smiling.

“Eh?” said the colonel; he was, in fact, suddenly aware of the charm of Caleb’s rare smile. He had not known that the man could smile like that.

“I’m afraid I appear an interloper in a fenced, no-trespass field,” Caleb continued pleasantly. “I’m a Republican, of course, and”--his eyes twinkled--“something of a Yankee, but, as we can’t elect a Republican, you must forgive me for choosing the less instead of the greater evil.”

Colonel Royall picked up his broad-brimmed Panama and twirled it thoughtfully on the top of his stick. “What’s your objection to Aylett?” he asked meditatively.

Trench was momentarily embarrassed, then he plunged boldly. “In the parlance, we would call him a machine man,” he said; “he was elected by the same system that has ruled this State for years; he’s bound hand and foot to it, and his reëlection means--a continuance of the present conditions.”

It was now Colonel Royall’s turn to smile. “You mean a continuance of Jacob Eaton? Well, I expect it will, and I don’t know but what it’s a good thing. You haven’t converted me to your heresy, Mr. Trench, but I’ve tasted of your hospitality, and if you don’t come and taste mine I’ll feel it a disgrace. Why have you not come to see me, sir? I asked you when I came here to acknowledge your courtesy to my daughter.”

Trench reddened again. “I’m coming, Colonel,” he said at once, “but”--he hesitated--“are you sure that a man of my political faith will be entirely welcome?”

Colonel Royall straightened himself. “Sir, Mr. Eaton does not choose my guests. I appreciate your feeling and understand it. I shall be happy, sir, to see you next Sunday afternoon,” and he bowed formally, having risen to his full height.

Caleb took his proffered hand heartily, and walked with him to the door. Yet he did not altogether relish the thought of a call at Broad Acres; he remembered too vividly his visit there to refund Diana’s money, and reddened at the thought of a certain receipt which he still carried in his pocket. He had set out to restore her change because he did not wish her to think she had been overcharged, and it was not until he had fairly embarked upon the interview that he had regretted not sending it by mail, and had reached a point where stealing it would have seemed a virtue! The fact that the Broad Acres people seldom, if ever, came to his shop had made its return in the natural course of events doubtful, and the matter had seemed to him simple and direct until Diana met it. The Quaker in him received its first shock that night, and he recoiled from giving them another opportunity to mortify his pride. Before that he had regarded Miss Royall as supremely and graciously beautiful; since then he had realized that she could be both thoughtless and cruel.

He stood in his door watching the old colonel’s erect figure walking up the long road under the shadow of the great trees that lined it at intervals. There was something at once stately and appealing in the old man’s aspect, yet there was power in his eyes and the pose of his white head. He reminded Caleb of an old lion, sorely stricken but magnificent; some wound had gone deep. As yet the younger man had no notion of it; when he did know he marveled much at the strange mingling of knight-errantry and tenderness in the breast of one of Nature’s noblemen. As it was, he was supremely conscious that he liked Colonel Royall and that Colonel Royall liked him, but that the colonel was vividly aware that the shopkeeper at the Cross-Roads was not his social equal; Caleb wondered bitterly if he went further, and considered that the gentleman of good blood and breeding was his equal when in law and politics?

He turned from the door with a whimsical smile and patted his dog’s uplifted head; then, as his eyes lighted on the worn leather chair in which the colonel had just sat, he turned it abruptly to the wall.

VIII

BEFORE Sunday Caleb’s settlement of his first case was celebrated in Eshcol. Judge Hollis got the facts from Juniper and spread the story abroad. It was too good to keep. The cockerel was valued at three dollars, being rare, and the pullets cost seventy-five cents each. The attorney for the defendant had paid the costs without pleading the case at the bar.

The judge asked if he intended to settle all difficulties on the same plane? If so, he could send him enough clients to form a line down the Mississippi from St. Louis to New Orleans. Juniper was telling it too, without grasping the judge’s point of view. As a lawyer, Juniper claimed that Caleb Trench could out-Herod Herod. He protested that the mere paying for the fowls had saved Lysander from being tarred and feathered; for Aaron Todd’s indignant threats were magnified by memory, and no one but Mr. Trench would have thought of so simple and efficacious a remedy.

The settlement of Lysander’s difficulties coming after the famed Cresset speech created a sensation between wrath and merriment among Caleb’s political opponents. What manner of man was he? Caleb Trench, Quaker, posted on his door might have explained him to some, but to the majority it would have remained Greek. Besides, Caleb was not orthodox; he had always leaned to his mother’s religion, and she had been an Episcopalian; between the two creeds he had found no middle course, but he had a profound respect for the faith that brought Diana to her knees with the simplicity of a child in the little old gray stone church where the new curate had installed a boy choir.

It was long past church time, and after the early Sunday dinner, when he sat on the porch with Colonel Royall at Broad Acres. The colonel was a delightful host, and this time he did not discuss politics; he talked, instead, about his father’s plantation in Virginia before the war, a subject as safe as the Satires of Horace, yet Trench fidgeted a little in his chair. He was conscious that Diana was passing through the hall behind him, and that, after her first correctly courteous greeting, she had avoided the piazza. He was, in fact, distinctly the colonel’s guest.

Diana was more vividly aware of social distinctions than her father, and less forgetful of them; she was only twenty-three, and the time was not yet when she could forgive a man for doing anything and everything to earn his bread. There were so many ways, she thought, that did not embrace the village yardstick! Besides, she rather resented the Cresset speech. Jacob Eaton was her cousin, three times removed it was true, but still her cousin, and that held. Diana could not reconcile herself to the freedom of political attacks, and Caleb Trench’s cool, unbiased criticisms of Eaton and his methods seemed to her to be mere personalities, and she had gone as far as quarreling with the colonel for asking him to call.

“I don’t like his attack on Jacob, pa,” she had said hotly; “he’s no gentleman to make it!”

The colonel meditated, his eyes twinkling. “He’s a good deal of a man though, Di.”

And Diana had turned crimson, though she did not know why, unless she remembered suddenly her own impression of him in his little office, when the flare of the burning wood fell on his face. All these things made her angry and she had received him with an air that reminded Trench of the receipt for six cents, yet Diana was superbly courteous. Neither Mrs. Eaton nor Jacob appeared; they lived about three miles away, and Mrs. Eaton had refused absolutely to visit Cousin David on Sunday if he intended to entertain the lower classes. She had only a very nebulous idea of the political situation, but she thought that Trench had vilified Jacob.

But with the colonel Caleb was happily at home; even the colonel’s slow drawl was music in his ears, and he liked the man, the repose of his manner, the kindly glance of his sad eyes, for his eyes were sad and tender as a woman’s. Yet Colonel Royall had shot a man for a just cause thirty years before, and it was known that he carried and could use his revolver still. The fire of the old-time gentleman sometimes sent the quick blood up under his skin and kindled his glance, but his slow courtesy made him ever mindful of others. Sitting together, with the sun slanting across the lawns and the arch of the horse-chestnuts shadowing the driveway, Caleb told the colonel the story of his father’s failure and, more lightly, something of his own struggles. Then he got down to reading law with Judge Hollis.

“A pretty costly business for you, sir,” the colonel said wickedly, and then laughed until the blue veins stood out on his forehead.

Caleb laughed too, but colored a little. “Juniper is an old rogue,” he said amusedly. “I should have bribed him to hold his tongue.”

Colonel Royall straightened his face and rubbed his eyeglasses on a dollar bill, which, he held, was the only way to clean them. “Lysander is the rogue,” he said, “and old Aunt Charity has been known to steal Juniper’s clothes for him to wear. She dressed him in Juniper’s best last year and sent him to the fair with all the money from her washing. Meanwhile the old man had nothing but his blue jeans and a cotton undershirt, and wanted to go to the fair, too. There was a great row. Of course Lysander got drunk and was sent up for thirty days in Juniper’s Sunday clothes. Lordy!” the colonel laughed heartily, “you could hear the noise down at the embankment. Juniper wanted a ‘divorcement’ and his clothes, principally his clothes. Judge Hollis and I had to fit him out, but he and Aunt Charity didn’t speak until there was another funeral; that brings niggers together every time; there’s a chaste joy about a funeral that melts their hearts.”

The colonel laughed again reminiscently, but Caleb, being a young man and human, was aware that Diana had crossed the hall again, and that she must have heard her father laughing at him. It was not long after this that he made his adieux, and he did not ask to see Miss Royall. The colonel walked with him to the gate and pointed out the magnificent promise of grapes on his vines.

“It will be a plentiful season, Mr. Trench,” he said, “and I hope a good harvest; let us have peace.”

Caleb understood the tentative appeal, and he liked the old man, but to a nature like Trench’s truth is the sling of David; he must smite Goliath. “Colonel Royall,” he said, “no man desires peace more than I do, but--peace with honor.”

Colonel Royall stood in the center of his own gateway, his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, his white head bare. “Mr. Trench,” he said, “I understand that we are not to have peace.”

Thursday night Kitty Broughton gave her ball. Her father was dead, and Judge Hollis stood beside her mother to help Kitty receive her guests. Everybody who was anybody in the city came out, and all Eshcol was there. Mrs. Eaton declared that it was the most mixed affair she ever saw, when she recognized Caleb Trench. She told all her friends not to allow any presuming person to present him to her, and in an hour she had made all the guests painfully aware that there was a black sheep in the fold. Then Kitty Broughton added fuel to the fire by dancing the first dance with him, and it was discovered, by all the girls present, that he danced exceedingly well, and quite as if he had always gone to entertainments. This surprised those who criticized Mrs. Broughton for asking him; yet not to have had him would have been to have the banquet without the salt. For Jacob Eaton was there, too, and though he wore an inscrutable face, it was exciting to wonder how he felt, and what would happen if they met?

Meanwhile, the dancing went on, and Mrs. Broughton had presented Trench to several of the young girls from the city, who admired his dancing, so he had partners; but he was aware of the frigidity of the atmosphere and he had not asked Miss Royall to dance. Instead, Diana had danced twice with her cousin and once with young Jack Cheyney, a nephew of the doctor. She was very beautiful. Trench looked across the ballroom at her and thought that no sculptured figure of nymph or dryad had ever excelled the beauty of her tall young figure, its slender but perfect lines, and the proud pose of her head. She wore a white brocade flowered with pink, like apple-blossoms, and Trench thought of her and the spring buds in his lonely office. The splendid diamond that shone like a star above her forehead reminded him of the wide divergence in their fates.

Judge Hollis found him and laid a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “Glad to see you out, Caleb,” he said heartily; “a change will do you good. Mouldy old law-books and old men pall on a young fellow like you. I saw you lead off with Kitty. The minx is pretty and dances well. Have you asked Diana to dance?”

“No,” said Trench; “Miss Royall has too many partners to accept another, I fancy.”

“Better ask her,” counseled the judge; “the lady is something of a tyrant. Don’t get on her black books too early, sir; besides, courtesy demands it. Didn’t she accept your care and hospitality?”

“She had to,” said Trench dryly.

“Precisely,” smiled the judge; “now ask her to dance and give her the chance to say ‘no,’ then she’ll forgive you.”

“I fancy there are more things to forgive than that,” replied Caleb musingly; “Mrs. Eaton has let me feel the weight of my social position.”