Part 6

“My dear boy, Jinny is the biggest cad in the world,” said the judge, drinking a glass of punch; “go and do as I tell you or I’ll drop your acquaintance. By the way, Caleb, how much are cockerels now?” and the old man’s laughter drew all eyes.

But it was after supper that, very much against his determinations, Caleb found himself asking Diana to dance. He has never known how it happened, unless it was the compelling power of her beauty in the corner of the ballroom when the music began again.

“May I have the honor?” he asked.

Diana hesitated the twentieth part of a second; it was almost imperceptible, but it sent the blood to the young man’s forehead. Then she smiled graciously. “With pleasure,” she said in a clear voice.

It happened that they swept past Eaton, her skirt brushing against him, and in another moment they were going down the old ballroom together. All eyes followed them and returned to Jacob Eaton, who was standing discomfited for an instant. It was only one instant; the next Jacob was more suave and smiling than ever, and an heiress from Lexington danced with him. However, in that one instant, his face had startled the groups nearest him. People suddenly remembered that it was said that Eaton carried firearms at all times, and was one of the straightest shots that side of the Mississippi.

Later, when Diana was driving home with her father, she spoke her mind. “I wish you’d make Jacob Eaton behave himself, pa,” she said; “he acts as if I belonged to him and he could choose my--my friends! I don’t like his manners up at Broad Acres, either; he said the other day that the cold grapery should be pulled down, and that he didn’t believe in owning a race-horse.”

Colonel Royall rubbed the back of his head thoughtfully; his eyes were troubled.

“His manners are becoming insufferable,” Diana went on, without heeding the silence.

“If he’s rude to you, Diana,” the colonel said quietly, “just say so and I’ll thrash him.”

“I sometimes wish you would!” she retorted wrathfully, and then, reaching up in the dim carriage, she patted the colonel’s cheek. “You’re an old dear,” she said fondly, “but you do get imposed on, and Jacob never does!”

IX

DR. CHEYNEY’S old gig traveled up the hill just behind Mrs. Eaton’s carriage, and both turned into the gateway of Broad Acres.

That was the morning after Kitty Broughton’s ball. The doctor had not been there, having had a bad case on his hands in Eshcol, and he was full of excitement over a new review of the Cresset speech published in New York, in a great metropolitan daily. It seemed that Caleb Trench was going to be celebrated and old William Cheyney had championed him. He had the paper in his pocket and wanted to show it to Colonel Royall, but there was Mrs. Eaton, and when the doctor climbed down from his high seat she was already delivering her opinion to Diana and her father, and she did not suppress it on account of Dr. Cheyney.

“I can’t imagine what has come over you, Colonel Royall!” that lady was saying with great indignation; “you must be out of your senses to allow Diana to dance in public with a common shopkeeper, a--a kind of hoodlum, too!”

This was too much for Dr. Cheyney, who shook with silent laughter; and there was a twinkle in Colonel Royall’s eye.

“My dear Jinny,” he said pleasantly, “have you lived all these years without knowing that it’s Diana who bosses me?”

“I call it a shameful exhibition,” continued Mrs. Eaton hotly. “I never have believed in mixing the classes--never! And to see my own cousin, and a young girl at that, dancing with that--that fellow! As far as it looked to other people, too, she enjoyed it.”

“Did you, Diana?” queried Dr. Cheyney mildly, standing with his hands in his pockets, and a queer smile on his puckered old face.

“I did,” said Diana, very red.

“Whoopee!” exclaimed the doctor, and went off into convulsions of laughter.

Mrs. Eaton’s wrath passed all bounds. “At your age,” she said loftily to Diana, “I should have been ashamed to confess it.”

“I am,” said Diana.

“I’m truly glad of it!” cried Mrs. Eaton.

“Let’s get the stuffing out of it, Jinny,” suggested the colonel mildly.

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Mrs. Eaton stiffly. “I should call that an extremely vulgar expression. I’m very glad that Diana is ashamed, and I only hope it will never occur again. In my day, young ladies of social prominence were careful who they danced with. I’m sure I can’t see any reason for Diana dancing with Mr. Trench. Any one who reads that abominable speech of his at Cresset’s can see, at a glance, that he’s an anarchist.”

“Don’t you think that’s going some, Jinny?” argued the colonel mildly; “you might have said socialist, and still been rather strong.”

“I never could see any difference,” retorted the lady firmly, settling herself in the most comfortable wicker armchair. “An anarchist blows up everything, and a socialist advises you to blow up everything; the difference is altogether too fine for me!”

“Just the difference between cause and effect, eh, madam?” suggested the doctor delightedly, “and all ending in explosion.”

“Exactly,” said Mrs. Eaton, with an air of finality. “Diana, why in the world did you dance with him?”

“Because you and Jacob didn’t want me to,” Diana replied calmly.

Both the old men chuckled, and Mrs. Eaton reddened with anger. “You are very unnatural, Diana,” she said severely. “Jacob and I have your interests at heart. He didn’t consider the man a proper person for you to be acquainted with!”

Diana opened her lips to reply, but the colonel forestalled her, anticipating trouble. “He’s been my guest, Jinny,” he remarked placidly.

Mrs. Eaton teased her head. “You’d entertain Tom, Dick and Harry for charity’s sake, Cousin David,” she retorted; “the first time I saw him here he brought six cents in change to your daughter.”

“He’s honest, Mrs. Eaton,” said the doctor, twinkling; “he’s a Quaker.”

“I don’t know anything about Quakers,” she replied stiffly, “I never met one!” and her tone signified that she did not want to.

“Well, they’re not anarchists, Jinny!” observed the colonel; “perhaps, you’ve heard of William Penn.”

“I’m not quite a fool, David,” she retorted in exasperation.

Dr. Cheyney was enjoying himself; he had taken the rocker by the steps and was swaying gently, his broad straw hat on his knee. He took the New York paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. “Perhaps you’d like to read a review of the Cresset speech, madam?” he said amiably; “they’ve got it here, and they speak of Trench as a young lawyer who has suddenly roused a State from apathy.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Eaton, with overwhelming politeness, “you are too kind. Probably Diana would like to read it.”

Diana was rosy with anger, and her eyes sparkled. “Cousin Jinny, I don’t like the man any better than you do!” she declared, “and I detest and loathe that Cresset speech; I’ve breakfasted on it, and dined on it, and supped on it, until--until I hate the name of it!”

“Diana,” said Dr. Cheyney, “you’ll need those pink capsules yet!”

“I can’t see what you all admire in that man!” protested Mrs. Eaton irritably; “he keeps a shop and he goes to vulgar political meetings; if that isn’t enough, what is?”

“Why, the truth is, Jinny, that he’s a real live man,” said the colonel, putting on his spectacles to read the New York version of the Cresset speech.

“I prefer a gentleman,” said Mrs. Eaton crushingly.

Dr. Cheyney twinkled. “Madam,” he said superbly, “so do I.”

Colonel Royall, meanwhile, was following the speech, line by line, with his finger. Half-way down the column, he lowered the paper. “After all, he was advocating the Australian ballot,” he remarked thoughtfully.

“He wants to go to the people for the election of senators,” said Dr. Cheyney; “he doesn’t believe in our legislatures when the great corporations are interested. Yes, I suppose he does like the Australian ballot.”

“I should think he would,” said Mrs. Eaton promptly; “I’ve always looked upon Australia as a penal settlement.”

Dr. Cheyney shook with silent laughter again. “Madam,” he said, “do you think him a possible ticket-of-leave man?”

“I am disposed to think anything of a man who can and does support Garnett Yarnall for governor,” she replied frigidly.

Dr. Cheyney’s face sobered suddenly, and Colonel Royall rustled the paper uneasily. After all, she had cause; a Yarnall had shot her husband. The two men felt it less keenly than Diana. She rose suddenly and offered her elderly relative her arm.

“Cousin Jinny, let’s go and see my new rose stocks,” she said mildly; “they’ve been set out in the south garden.”

Mrs. Eaton rose, propitiated, and accepted Diana’s arm, the two moving off together in apparent amity. Dr. Cheyney’s eyes followed them, and then came back to meet the peculiar sadness of Colonel Royall’s.

“Do you think she’s--she’s like--” The colonel’s voice trailed; he was looking after Diana.

“No,” said Dr. Cheyney sharply, “no, she’s like your mother.”

The wistful expression died in the other man’s eyes, and he forced a smile. “You think so? Perhaps she does. Mother was a good woman, God bless her memory,” he added reverently, “but a month ago”--he leaned forward, and the hands that gripped the arms of his chair trembled slightly--“a month ago I caught her looking at me; her eyes are hazel, and”--he avoided the doctor’s glance, and colored with the slow painfulness of an old man’s blush--“her eyes were just like her mother’s.”

Dr. Cheyney got up abruptly and laid his hand on his shoulder. “Wake up, David,” he said sharply, “wake up--you’re dreaming.”

“I haven’t breathed it to any one else, William,” Colonel Royall said, “not in eighteen years--but I’ve seen it all the time.”

His old friend eyed him grimly. “And it’s frightened you?”

The colonel drew a deep breath. “William,” he said, “do you know how a starving man would feel when he saw his last crust in danger?”

The old doctor paced the broad veranda; beside it a tree of heaven spread its graceful limbs, every branch still double tipped with the rosy leaves of its spring budding. Before him stretched the tender green of the south lawn, shaded by the grove of horse-chestnuts; beyond he caught a distant glimpse of the river.

“David,” he said uncompromisingly, “Diana has a noble heart, but--Jinny Eaton is a fool.”

“I know it,” said the colonel thoughtfully, “but she’s been a mother to the girl and she loves her.”

“She wants to marry her to Jacob,” snapped the doctor.

“I know it,” said the colonel.

“He’s not fit to tie her shoe,” retorted the doctor. “Jacob’s the slickest critter in the county, but I haven’t got any more use for him than Caleb Trench has--if he is your cousin.”

The colonel looked thoughtful. “He’s very clever, William,” he protested, “and he’s very much in love.”

“Fiddlesticks!” said the doctor.

Colonel Royall laughed a little in spite of himself. “You love Diana, too,” he remarked.

“I do,” said William Cheyney, “and I don’t believe Jacob will make her happy. But, Lord bless me, David, you and I won’t do the choosing--Miss Di will! In my opinion it won’t be Jacob Eaton, either.” Then he added briskly: “This young lawyer of ours is right about Aylett; he’s a machine man and the machine is rotten. We want Yarnall; I wish you’d come to think so, too.”

Colonel Royall thought, putting the tips of his fingers together. “The truth is, the Eatons are too near to me,” he admitted quietly; “you know Jinny can’t forget that a Yarnall shot her husband, and I don’t know that I could ask it of her.”

“Her husband was guilty,” said the doctor flatly.

“I’m afraid he was,” admitted Colonel Royall, “though Mrs. Yarnall denied it; the jury justified Yarnall.”

“I can’t forgive one man for shooting another for an unworthy woman!” said the doctor fiercely, forgetting many things.

The slow red crept up to Colonel Royall’s hair. “I ought to have done it,” he said simply; “but--but I let him live to marry her.”

“Just so,” said William Cheyney; “solidly right, too; that’s purgatory enough for most of ’em,” he added, under his breath, as he took the long turn on the veranda.

Colonel Royall did not hear him; his head was bare, and the light breeze stirred his white hair; it had turned suddenly, twenty years before. “It would be against all precedent for any of the family to favor a Yarnall,” he remarked slowly.

“Jacob won’t,” said the doctor shortly, a dry smile crinkling the wrinkles around his kindly, shrewd old eyes.

“Nor would you, in Jacob’s place,” countered the colonel, tapping the floor with his stick.

A negro appeared promptly at the door.

“Two juleps, Kingdom,” he ordered.

Dr. Cheyney ceased his promenade and sat down. “This State’s got to be cleaned up, David,” he said maliciously; “we’ve got too much machine. I’m all for Trench.”

“I’m not sure I know what ails us,” objected the colonel humorously; “we’re either bewitched or hypnotized. In a fortnight we’ve set up Caleb Trench, and I reckon he’s more talked of than the volcano in the West Indies.”

“He will be later,” said the doctor; “there’s a man for you!”

“They say he began by getting hold of the backwoodsmen; they go down to his shop and discuss politics once a week; he organized them into a club and made them take a pledge to vote for Yarnall.”

“All rot,” said William Cheyney fiercely; “do you think the man’s a damned rogue? He’s talked straight politics to ’em, and he’s showed up some of the machine methods. By the way, David, he’s set his face against Jacob Eaton’s get-rich-quick games. I don’t believe in ’em myself; when that young bounder, Macdougall, came at me about them the other day in the bank, I told him I kept all my money tied up in a stocking. I reckon he thinks I do,” twinkled the doctor, “because I’ve nothing in their bank. David, I hope you’re not favoring Jacob’s schemes too heavily?”

Colonel Royall looked perplexed. Kingdom-Come had just brought out a tray with two tinkling glasses of iced mint julep, and he watched the white-headed negro set them out deftly on the little portable basket tea-table of Diana’s.

“How are you feeling, Kingdom?” Dr. Cheyney asked genially, eying the juleps.

“Right po’ly, Doctah,” Kingdom replied, showing his ivories, “but I manages ter keep my color.”

“Eh?” said the doctor, startled.

Kingdom-Come beamed. “But I’se got er mis’ry in my chest, an’ I reckon I’se got vertigo an’ congestion ob de brain; I hez dese er dizzy turns, suh.”

“Take some castor oil, Kingdom,” said the doctor, placidly stirring his julep, “and put a mustard plaster on your stomach.”

“Yass, suh, thank yo’,” said Kingdom, a little weakly. “I’se done took two doses ob oil this week, an’ I’se been rubbin’ myse’f wid some ob dis yer kittycurah.”

“Good Lord!” said Dr. Cheyney, “take a pint of whiskey and go to bed.”

“William,” said Colonel Royall, after Kingdom had gone, “I don’t see why you set your face so flatly against Jacob Eaton’s investments. Who has talked this up?”

“Caleb Trench,” said the doctor.

“Heavens!” ejaculated Colonel Royall, “is there no end?”

“To him?” Dr. Cheyney twinkled, “No, sir, not yet. He’s taken the packing out of Jacob; he says that more than half these countrymen vote with the Eaton faction because they’ve put all their money in the Eaton Investment Company, and I’ll be hanged, sir, if he doesn’t state it fairly.”

Colonel Royall got up and stood, a towering figure of a man, his blue eyes kindled. “William,” he said hoarsely, “that doesn’t sound honorable.”

“David,” retorted the old man uncompromisingly, “I tell the truth and shame the devil--I’ve got an eighty-mile circuit in this county, sir, and it’s true!”

“Then, sir,” said Colonel Royall, “this county’s rotten.”

William Cheyney leaned back in his chair and smiled quietly. “It’s the same way in the State; the Eaton Company’s offering bigger interest than any other company this side of the Mississippi; it hasn’t cut its rate, even in the panic, and it’s getting new investors every day--or it did till Caleb Trench got up at Cresset and cut the thing in two.”

“Caleb Trench?” repeated the colonel slowly. “William, that young man’s creating a sensation. I begin to doubt him; does he mean it, or is he bidding for notoriety?”

Dr. Cheyney smiled grimly. “David,” he said, “you ask Judge Hollis; he believes in him and so do I.”

“I don’t know why I shouldn’t believe in Jacob,” said the colonel stiffly; “he’s my own blood, and we might as well believe in one young man as another. What’s the difference between them?”

“Well,” replied the doctor slowly, “when I go into a grocery store and see one basket of eggs labelled ‘Box eggs, fresh, thirty-two cents,’ and the other basket, ‘Hen’s eggs, forty-five cents,’ I’m kind of naturally suspicious of the box eggs. Not that I want to bear too hard on Jacob.”

X

MEANWHILE Jacob Eaton rode out with Diana in the early mornings, before even Dr. Cheyney had his breakfast. Jacob had no taste for sunrise or the lark, but if Diana rode in the first freshness of morning, he rode stubbornly beside her, more stubbornly than she cared to admit.

After all, Jacob was her third cousin, and the propinquity, with the close family relations which Mrs. Eaton jealously maintained, made him seem even nearer. Without liking him very much, Diana had tolerated his constant presence for so many years that it had become a habit. No doubt we could grow happily accustomed to a hippopotamus as a pet, if we could keep it long enough in our individual bathtubs. Usage and propinquity! How many recalcitrants have been reconciled to an unwelcome fate by these two potent factors in life!

Diana, riding up the hill through clustered masses of rhododendrons, was happily indifferent to Jacob at her bridle rein. Jacob was useful, rather pleasant to talk to, and paid her the constant homage of undisguised admiration. After all, it was pleasant to be with one to whom she meant so much. She could hold him lightly at arm’s length, for Jacob was too wise to hazard all for nothing, yet she was aware that her lightest wish had its weight. It was only when he tried to assume the right of an elder brother to meddle with her affairs, as he had at Kitty Broughton’s ball, that she resented his interference.

Jacob had, indeed, slipped into her ways with a tame-cattiness which, no matter how it accorded with his sleek appearance, was in direct contradiction to the character behind the mask. Diana, flouting him in her girlish coquetry, was but sowing the wind; if she married him later, she would reap the whirlwind, yet half her relations desired it. Thus wisely does the outsider plan a life.

Diana stopped abruptly and, bending from the saddle, gathered a large cluster of pink rhododendrons; the dew was on them still and it sparkled in the sunshine.

“Why didn’t you let me break it for you?” Jacob asked mildly; “sometime when you bend that way from your saddle you’ll lose your balance and--”

“Take a cropper,” said Diana. “I hope I shan’t break my nose.”

“Or your head, which would mean my heart,” he retorted.

She laughed; she was very charming when she laughed and, perhaps, she knew it. Diana was very human. “Which is harder than my head,” she said; “in fact, I have heard something of the nether millstone.”

“You would find it very brittle if you turned the cold shoulder,” said Jacob calmly, flicking the young shrubs with his crop.

“A piece of broken crockery,” mocked Diana; “you will have it mended when I marry some one else.”

“On the contrary,” he retorted, unmoved, “to quote the romancer: ‘_Je vais me fich’ à l’eau._’”

“What?” she questioned, with lifted brows.

“It’s French,” he explained.

“So I supposed,” replied Diana, “but not as I learned it.”

“Nevertheless it is forcible,” said Jacob; “it means, inelegantly, that I will pitch myself into the river.”

“Inelegant and untruthful then,” said she.

“I got it from a book,” he said, “a recent one, and famous. I am quoting the modern novelists.”

They had reached the crest of a low ridge, and through a growth of red cedars could see the flash and leap of the river. Diana drew rein and turned her face fully toward her companion.

“Jacob,” she said abruptly, “why did you give all that money to Juniper?”

Jacob smiled, his eyelids drooping; in the sunshine his clear smooth skin looked waxy, as though it would take the impression of a finger and keep it. “There’s an instance of my heart, Diana,” he said sententiously.

She studied him attentively. “Was it altogether that?” she demanded, the straight line of her brows slightly contracted.

“What else?” he asked lightly, leaning forward to break off a cedar berry and toss it away again. “Look here, Di, you’re down on me--what’s the matter?”

“I want to understand you,” she replied slowly; “fifty dollars is too large a sum to give all at once to a negro; you’ll corrupt a member of the church, a brand snatched from the burning. Juniper has experienced religion.”

Jacob laughed. “Been stealing chickens lately, I reckon.”

“No, it was Lysander,” corrected Diana demurely.

“The shopkeeper lawyer can defend him again,” said her cousin; “all the fools are not dead yet.”

“No, indeed,” she agreed, so heartily that he looked up quickly.

“I really meant to help the old nigger,” he said frankly; “he’s always begging, and he’s been sick and out of work. I’m sorry if you think fifty too much.”

Diana touched her horse lightly, and they moved on. “Too much at one time,” she said more gently. “He’ll spend it in an enormous supply of tobacco, watermelons and whiskey, and probably go to the workhouse. If he does, you’ll have to bail him out, Jacob.”

“Isn’t there a bare possibility that the watermelons might kill him?” he suggested meekly.

“A negro?” Diana laughed. “Jacob, why didn’t you give it to Aunt Charity?”

“She has, at present, purloined the silver teapot,” said Jacob; “my soul loves justice.”

She looked sharply at him, her young face severe. “I believe you had another motive. Are you sure that it was for his good, and only for his good?”

“Cross my heart,” said Jacob devoutly. “See here, Diana, why should I fritter away my substance? Of what use on earth could that old nigger be to me?”

She looked thoughtful. The horses moved on evenly abreast. “None that I can see,” she admitted honestly; “after all, it was good of you; forgive me.”

“After all, there is some good in me,” he replied, paraphrasing. “I’m worth noticing, my fair cousin!”

“When you come directly across the horizon!” laughed Diana.

Below them now was the highroad, and as they looked along the white bend of its elbow, below the ash and the young maples, they both saw the tall straight figure of Caleb Trench. He did not see them; he passed below them, and turned the shoulder of the hill. Diana said nothing; her eyes had reluctantly followed him.

“There goes a fool,” remarked her cousin, “or a knave.”

“Why is it,” asked Diana, “that a man, failing to agree with another, calls him names?”

He laughed, his cheek reddening. “Why should I agree with that shyster?”

“Why should that shyster agree with you?” she mocked, a light kindling in her clear eyes.

Jacob chuckled unpleasantly. “I hope you’ve never claimed that six cents again,” he commented; “he’s got your receipt, you know.”

It was her turn to redden. “You are jealous of his growing reputation,” she flung at him.

He shrugged a shoulder. “Of that beautiful speech at Cresset’s, in which he painted me as the devil and all his works?”

“I admired the Cresset speech!” she exclaimed, a sentiment which would have amazed Mrs. Eaton.

Jacob laughed. “So do I,” he said, “it was first-class campaign matter, but--well, Di, personal abuse is a little vulgar, isn’t it, just now?”

“Not if you deserved it,” she said defiantly.

“I’d take any amount if you’d promise not to dance with him again.”

“I’m the best judge of my partners,” said Diana, with indignant dignity; “if any one speaks it should be my father.”