Part 9

It was the third evening after her mother's burial that Madeline called Father Vincent into the little study adjoining the parlor. The New Orleans lawyer had come up, held a private interview with her, and had gone away again, and she had sent off her wedding trousseau to a young girl in a distant town, and certain things belonging to her mother she had carefully collected and put together. So much Aunt Dilsey, the priest, and a kind old lady who proposed to stay with her a few days knew; but she offered no explanation, and gave no clue to her plans for the future.

"She acts for all the world like she didn't expect to get married, herself," the old lady confided to a friend or two. "I can't understand what she intends to do."

Father Vincent felt some curiosity too, and went into the little room rather eagerly. She sat before her mother's desk with a lot of papers open before her. It came upon him with the force of surprise that she had changed greatly in a few days. Her features were sharpened, her eyes had purplish hollows under them, and the dull black gown she wore only brought out the intense pallor of her face.

"My child, where did you get those papers? You must let me examine them. There are some your mother wished destroyed," said the priest, hastily.

"I know, Father, I know," she said in a dull tone.

"Have you--"

"Read them? No; but I heard all that she told you that day."

"Ah!" he exclaimed, understanding why she looked so changed, and his eyes rested pityingly upon her. A fiery blush burned her throat and face for a moment, leaving her paler than ever when it receded.

"Yes; I know," she said, and clasped her hands together on her lap. "Father, will you tell Mr. Everett?"

"But--"

"I cannot do it; help me, will you?"

It was a piteous appeal, and his heart melted at the sight of her anguished eyes.

"You think he ought to know it?"

"He must, of course," she said, and he felt satisfied that she had not, for a moment even, been tempted to keep the truth from him. "He is in the parlor," she continued after a slight pause; "tell him all, spare nothing," her tensely drawn lips quivering, her hands tightly clenched.

"My child, you take it too hard," laying his hand on her head. "I am grieved for you, but do not let it spoil your peace."

"How can I help it, Father, with the training I have had? I cannot change my beliefs in a day. Oh, you know how my friends would shrink from me if they knew the truth, and I--I cannot blame them. I should do the same. There is no help, no comfort, for me anywhere."

"There is the comfort of the Church, the help of Heaven."

"Ah, yes; I forget--I forget."

"But hear your lover before you decide your future. He has a right to it, remember."

"Tell him, Father, tell him."

He went away, and, turning the light a little lower, she waited. He made the story short, for in a few minutes the door opened again and her lover entered. She rose to meet him, determined to be brave and self-possessed, but that new, bitter sense of shame again overpowered her. She seemed to shrink and shrivel under his tender eyes, and sank down with bowed head. But he knelt by her chair with his arms around her, and drew that proud, averted face against him.

"Dearest, dearest," he whispered, the very tone of his voice carrying to her his sympathy, his unshaken love.

"I thank God that I learned the truth in time," she said faintly.

"In time for what, Madeline?"

"To save you."

He raised her face, forced her to look at him.

"Do you believe my love has changed?"

"It has an element of pity now."

"But pity for your suffering, and not because I hold you less noble. I can take care of myself and you also, my darling. Father Vincent and I agree that it will be best for you to go North, get away from old associations, old ideas; so we'll be married quietly, and leave here at once." He rose, and she stood up also, facing him, looking straight into his eyes.

"Did Father Vincent tell you _all_? Do you realize just what I am?"

"Yes; you are the woman I love--my promised wife. Can I hold you blamable, dearest, or unlove you simply because--come, Madeline, put all the past behind you, and we will never speak of this again."

"Impossible, Roger. You are generous, and I'm not afraid that you would ever reproach me, but it is not worth while for us to argue the matter. We cannot marry. In my own sight I have been humbled into the dust, and as your wife I should always have a cringing, cowardly feeling of unworthiness. I could not be happy myself, and my misery would only overshadow you. Don't think me unreasonable or lacking in love. Love! It fills all my heart, pervades every atom of my being. I loved you at once--the first moment, I think, that my eyes rested upon you. The prejudices which seemed so foolish, so false, are interwoven, blended with life itself. We, here, call them instincts, holding us apart from the lower order of man, and my education only fostered, developed them to the utmost in me."

"If your mother had only--"

"Don't think hardly of her, my dearest. She is not to blame. She brought me up as she believed best, and implanted the principles and beliefs she thought would be my surest safeguards. As she grew weak and ill the secret burdened her, and for fear that she might be wronging you she sought Father Vincent's advice. How I thanked God that she died without knowing that her work was all undone!" She flung herself again into the chair, and he saw that she was too excited, too overwrought, to be reasoned with.

She looked up at him.

"Had you known my birth, my parentage, from the first, could you have loved me?"

"I do not know," he said candidly; "I only know that I do love you, and that I will not give you up." His face flushed, his eyes kindled. "You must, you shall, be my wife. But we will not talk of it any more to-night: you need rest, and time to recover from the double shock which has come upon you. To-morrow--every day, I shall come, until you learn to look at this as I do. Good-night, Madeline. Think wisely, reasonably, dear."

"I will try; and you will know my decision to-morrow, Roger."

He bent over her, kissed the bright waves of her hair; but she started up, and clasped her arms about him, drawing his lips down to hers in an abandonment of love she had never shown before. Tears rained from her eyes, the stony curves of her mouth melted, and he felt that it was a tacit surrender.

"To-morrow you will listen to me, Madeline," he said with the certainty of conviction.

"Yes; to-morrow," she replied, and turned, weeping, from him.

But when he came next morning Father Vincent met him at the door, while the old lady and Aunt Dilsey hovered in the hall with frightened, excited faces. Fear, vague, indefinite, but chilling, fell upon him. He had spent half the night in thinking and planning; he had felt assured that it needed only time and change of scene to restore Madeline to her former brightness; but even if a cloud should always hang over her, he wished to share its gloom. He could not fully appreciate her position, because he could not look at it from her standpoint. He could understand that it had been a cruel blow to her, but he could not understand how tragical. He felt very hopeful as he walked over to her home, but the face of the priest, those women in the background, startled him.

"What is the matter?" he cried sharply.

"She is gone," said Father Vincent.

"Gone!" he echoed, paling suddenly, and half reeling.

"Yes."

"Where? In God's name, where?"

"That is what we do not know. She must have gone away on the early train this morning."

The blood came back to the young man's face, a hideous fear lifted from his mind.

"You do not think then--"

"No; a Capelle would never seek self-destruction."

Everett stood still and looked about the hall and through the open doors into the silent rooms, yesterday filled with the sweet influence of her presence, to-day empty, desolate, and a terrible sense of loss swept over him. Her words, "You will know my decision to-morrow," came back to his memory with crushing significance.

"Fool, fool that I have been!" he groaned aloud, and the priest took him by the arm and led him into the parlor.

"The women think her mind has been upset by her mother's sudden death. It is well; let all her friends think so. But we must find her, Mr. Everett."

"Yes; I will go at once," said Roger, rousing himself. "It is to hide from me that she has gone away; but I shall find her, I shall certainly find her."

He spoke firmly and quietly, but the task before him proved very hard, for she had left no written message, no clue to her plans or destination.

It was a spring day in the year 1886 that Roger Everett turned aside from the beaten track of the tourist in New Orleans to visit a school in the old quarter of the city--a school maintained by a few New England philanthropists for colored children exclusively. He lost his bearings in the narrow streets among the quaint old-fashioned houses, and stopped to make inquiries at a small building opening on the street. He rapped on the half-closed wooden shutter with his stick, his eyes meanwhile wandering up and down the silent, sunny street, absently noting the scant, picturesque attire of some brown-faced children at play on the sidewalk and the pathetic figure of an old negro sitting on a doorstep. His failure to find Madeline Capelle had left its traces upon his face. Five years had elapsed since her disappearance, and though he had not ceased to look into every woman's face he met, he had given up hope of finding her. A serene-eyed woman in a black gown and cap came to the door, and he instantly recognized the dress as the uniform of some religious order or sisterhood.

"Come in," she said in a gentle, subdued tone.

"I beg your pardon. I merely wished to--"

"It will not be an intrusion. Many have already come to-day to see her, for you know many love her. This way, please," she said, and without waiting for him to speak again, she turned and walked through two rather bare, dusky rooms into a small one opening on a green, magnolia-shaded court. He followed her, puzzled, but with a touch of curiosity, wondering how he should explain himself; but the moment he crossed the threshold he understood the mistake that she had made, for in the centre of the room stood a white-draped bier, and through the unfolded linen he could trace the outline of a rigid human form.

"See the flowers," his conductress whispered, pointing to the masses of cape jasmines, roses, and smaller flowers. "Sister Christiana loved them, but she loved all things beautiful and good. They were brought this morning by negroes she has been kind to. To teach, to elevate, and to nurse them has been her mission. No service seemed too humble, no duty too hard for her. She did indeed 'belong to Christ.'"

Her mild eyes kindled, her hand instinctively sought the cross at her side.

"She died calmly and with joy, and knew us until the last moment."

He followed her across the room, treading softly, as we always do in the presence of death. With reverent hand she laid aside the shielding linen, and he leaned forward--the past once more a vivid reality and not a memory, not a dream vanishing from him, for the face he looked down upon was the face of Madeline Capelle.

*AN OLD-TIME LOVE STORY.*

The Galers lived on the summit of a long hill sloping down to the brink of the Chattahoochee River, and nearly opposite the small town of Roswell. Above the house and below it stretched the fertile acres of a fine plantation worked by many slaves; for old Jabez Galer was rich in land and negroes, besides owning a large interest in a wool factory over the river. Roswell was really the most important manufacturing town in Georgia before the War, though it was scattered so picturesquely over the river hills with no railroad market nearer than Atlanta.

But it does not enter the province of this short sketch to give a history of the old town with its factories scattered along short canals, fed from the river, its traditions reaching back into the early days of the settling of Georgia--its "lover's leap" on the brink of a wide creek, a cliff of gray rocks with lovely maidenhair ferns growing thickly around its base--but of the Galers living across the river from it in the midst of their small kingdom, surrounded by their black retainers, and of an old love story.

The house was big and white and squarely built, with the piazzas--without which no Southern house would have seemed complete--wide halls and large rooms belonging to a certain period of colonial architecture. The lower hall was ornamented with the antlers of a stag or two, some leopard-skin rugs, and with a stuffed owl perched above the door. The rooms wrere sparely furnished after the stiff fashion of the day, but linen closets and clothes-presses were full and overflowing; for there wrere swift spinners and skillful weavers among the negro women on the place, and a careful mistress to look after them. In the rear of the main dwelling were the negro quarters, and off at one side the barns and stables. The grassy lawn was shaded with fine old oaks and mimosa trees. In the back yard the little negroes disported, and a dozen hounds had their kennels; for Mr. Jabez Galer was fond of riding forth over the river hills in the early dawn, with dogs and gun and hunting-horn. His family consisted of himself, his meek, gentle sister, Miss Jane, and his grand-daughter, fair Pamela.

Mr. Jabez Galer was a character in his day and generation. He was impulsive and could be generous, but had a most tyrannical will and a violent temper. He ruled his household like an autocrat. There was something domineering in his very tread, the roll of his keen eye, the fit of the white linen arraying his portly person. He was a rather fine-looking old man, gray-haired and blue-eyed, and with evidences of good living in every line of his clean-shaven face. No man could be more genial than he when in a good humor, or appreciate a story or a joke more keenly; and he was kind to his negroes. True, they did not dare disobey him without expecting and receiving punishment, and they worked hard; but they were well clothed, housed and fed, and enjoyed their regular holidays and merrymakings.

Mr. Galer's doors were always open to the wandering prospector, the trader, the itinerant preacher, or, indeed, to any one who claimed his hospitality and seemed worthy of it, and his sister and granddaughter were free to entertain or be entertained by the society of Roswell; but his guests sometimes came in contact with his imperious will or his temper. To show what manner of man he was one experience is herein given:

A Kentucky horse-trader stopped at the house one night, and long after the other members of the family had retired he sat in the dining-room with his host drinking wine and telling stories. They both grew somewhat excited as the mellow vintage warmed their fancies. They told adventures of youthful gallantry. Mr. Galer had, in his time, figured prominently in society as a beau, dancing and paying compliments; and the Kentuckian admitted that he had also once felt proud of his nimble-footedness in treading the cotillon. He was invited to give an example of his skill, but declined. His host insisted, but he laughed contemptuously at the idea. Old Jabez Galer's choler rose. He went to the dining-room door and shouted for his own special servant, Elbert.

"Elbert, hey there! Elbert, you rascal, bring down your fiddle!"

An old negro man stumbled down the back stairway and into the room, rubbing open his sleepy eyes, a much abused and battered violin under his arm. He looked older than his master, his woolly head quite white, a complex tracery of wrinkles covering his shrewd black face; but he seemed active and strong, and betrayed not the slightest surprise at the midnight summons.

"Mars Galer up tu some mischief, sho'," he muttered, sitting down, with his feet drawn up under him, and beginning to tune the violin. He gave a few preparatory scrapes across the strings, and then began to play the old inspiring tunes his dusky people had danced to round many a brightly blazing bonfire, or in the light of the full moon. Mr. Galer turned the key in the door, reached down the gun resting in a rack above it, and deliberately leveled it at his astonished guest.

"Now dance, or I'll put a bullet through your head."

The Kentuckian was not a coward, but he had no weapon--how he longed for the pistols in his saddle-bags!--and realized that his host might do him mischief if not humored.

It was a curious scene, an extremely ludicrous one. The candles, set in tall, brass candlesticks, sputtered and flared, the tallow melting down in a little gutter on one side. They cast only an uncertain, flickering light over the room, and the tall, awkward Kentuckian, in creaking boots, shuffled over the bare floor until the house fairly trembled, and Miss Jane turned on her high feather bed in a chamber above, wondering what unseemly sport could be going on. But the victim of Mr. Galer's whims was a wary man and given to dissimulation when occasion required. He appeared to find such humor in the situation that his host was thrown entirely off guard and allowed the gun to rest negligently on the table in front of him. In a twinkling it was snatched from his loosened grasp, and the Kentuckian stood between him and the door.

"Now you try your skill awhile, Mr. Galer, or you may play best man at the funeral," he said, grimly.

It was a neat revenge, and instead of trying to rouse the household to his protection Mr. Galer promptly began to keep time to the music with slow, old-fashioned steps. But he had lost the lightness and skill of his youth, and, soon exhausted, had to beg for mercy. Elbert's eyes twinkled in secret glee over his master's discomfiture, and he played a livelier strain than ever. Mr. Galer and the trader parted the next morning in the friendliest manner, and he told the story of his defeat with the keenest appreciation.

With such a disposition to override all opposition to his wishes and desires, it is not to be supposed that his family had an easy life of it when wills clashed. It was only by stratagem that they could ever outwit him; and it was by stratagem that Pamela married the man she loved. It happened in this wise:

Adjoining Mr. Galer's plantation was one even larger and richer, belonging to Mr. Josiah Williamson, a man who had abundance of money, and was amply able to take life easy. He went away annually on a trip to the principal Northern cities, and even talked of some time going abroad. He and old Jabez Galer were warm friends, and it had long been understood between them that Pamela should become Mrs. Josiah Williamson when she arrived at a suitable age. At the date of this story she had reached eighteen, and her grandfather's plans for her future began to take active shape. One morning he stamped into the hall, threw his hat and riding-whip on a table, shouting in thundering tones:

"Permely! Per*me*ly! hey, Perme*lee!*"

The little negroes rolling in the sand in the back yard scampered away behind the kitchen, Miss Jane dropped the fine linen she was mending in the dining-room, and Elbert muttered over a half-polished boot: "Mars Jabe in one o' his tantrums 'g'in, ez I live."

"What is it, grandpa?" inquired a youthful voice from the upper hall, and Pamela stepped lightly down the broad, shallow stairs.

"Come here to me," he said, but in a softer tone; for she held the tenderest place in his heart; and she was fair enough to disarm even greater anger than his. She was a tall young person, with a certain charming dignity of carriage, a rather pale but lovely face, fine, pale brown hair, and steel-gray eyes. There was no vivid coloring about her, though plenty of character lay under that soft, subdued beauty. She was gowned in thin muslin befitting the summer day, with a narrow lace collar turned down around her slender neck. Mr. Galer laid his hands heavily on her shoulders, looking sternly into her clear eyes.

"What's this I hear about you and Sim Black?"

She looked down, and the whiteness of her face and throat turned to rose.

"I _would_ hang my head," giving her a slight shake. "What do you suppose that young beggar had the impudence to do this morning when I went over to Roswell? to ask me for you--you--old Jabez Galer's grand-daughter; declared that he had always loved you, and that it was with your consent he came to me."

"Yes sir," she said, in a low tone, tracing a seam in the floor with the toe of her neat little shoe.

He stamped the floor. "Well, he'll not get you, do you hear? Do you think I raised you, educated you, to marry a miserable little lawyer without a rood of land or a nigger to his name? No, sirrah!"

"I thought you always intended me to be happy, sir," paling again before his wrath, but firm.

"So I do, but you'll be happy in my way, marry the man I have selected for you, and his name is--Josiah Williamson."

She stared at him in a disconcertingly amazed, shocked way.

"_Why, grandpa!_"

"What's the matter, now?"

"He's as old as you are."

"He is not a year older than your aunt Jane."

"And I love Sim, dear grandpa," she pleaded.

"Don't you dare to think of him again! Williamson--"

"I will certainly not think of _him_," with a flash of her eyes.

"I have forbidden Black ever coming here again, and I'll wear him out with a cowhide if I ever hear of your speaking to him."

"Brother, brother," remonstrated Miss Jane's exasperatingly gentle voice from the dining-room door, her small person half hidden in an armful of mending.

"Don't 'brother' me! What have you been doing, not to look after this girl? But women are contrary creatures, all of them, and enough to drive a man distracted with their piety and sentimental foolishness!"

He went out upon the piazza, and sat down to let his vexation cool, while Pamela was folded in her grandaunt's comforting little arms, to the detriment of the linen, which received a copious shower of tears. But if she wept she was also determined. As old Elbert had once shrewdly said:

"Miss Pamely's er Galer, too, en got de Galer will, en de Galer temper, en things gwinter fly to pieces when she en ole Mars come tugether."

Mr. Galer sat on the piazza; but he waxed wroth every time he thought of young Black's presumption. Stretching afar before his eyes were his own cotton-fields, girdled on one side by the winding curves of the Chattahoochee, and on the other by deep, green forests, and through the palpitant air of the summer noon floated a field song, chanted by the joyous mellow voices of his slaves. His heart swelled with the pride of riches. Sim Black, indeed! when Pamela could have the pick and choice of the country, by right of her beauty and her dowry. What if the young lawyer did possess a brilliant mind and an eloquent tongue, and culture far beyond the average man in that region? he had sprung from obscure origin, and his future honors were as yet but empty promises, while Josiah Williamson's wealth and position were solid facts.

That afternoon, as Pamela sat in her room bending listlessly over some gay patchwork, Mammy Susannah came in, and from under the kerchief folded across her bosom, drew a little note.

"Honey, Elbert say, fo' de lub o' de Lawd not tu let old Mars know 'e fetch dis."

Pamela sprang up, flushing and trembling, to receive her first love-letter. It was brief:

"_Dearest:_--As your grandfather has forbidden me to enter his house again, I shall walk by the althea hedge in your garden this evening where, I pray you, meet me.

"Your devoted Lover, "JOHN SIMPSON BLACK."