Part 6

“He interested me, I don’t know why,” confessed Miss Hall. “I met him first walking in Chinquepin Hollow, his head sunk on his breast, talking to himself. I thought I never saw such a wreck of a handsome man. And his eyes, when he fixed them on me in passing, burned like live coals.”

Old Dick started irrepressibly.

“He--you met--oh, impossible! Gad, I believe I’m possessed by one idea. A foreigner, you say--traveling with his wife?”

“Yes; they stopped here but a day, to take the evening train. As it happened, they had the room next to mine, on the upper gallery; and as our windows, opening at the floor, almost touched, I heard them speaking to each other in French in a very excited, agitated way. Fearing I might overhear what was not intended for my ear, I got up and stepped out upon the gallery. Immediately there was silence, and a long, emaciated hand, like yellow wax, drew in their shutters close together.”

A burst of laughter followed this narration.

“Trust Eunice for hatching mystery,” said Louisa, laughing. “I saw the couple getting into the stage to go to the station: he, a prosaic invalid, his head wrapped in a silk muffler; she, a dumpy little French woman, perfectly commonplace. Come, General Ross, have you not brought back to us from your travels a new story?”

“Something that happened before the war, in a nice, gone-to-seed family,” added Louisa’s younger sister, Blanche. “And pray let the house have wainscoting and a secret chamber.”

“No, no; something real. A war story,” said young Harry Lemist, who had a thirst for active movement and little imagination.

“Upon my word,” said the General, when they allowed him to reply, “I am almost afraid to tell you what occurred in the room I slept in night before last, for fear you will think I have trumped it up to answer Miss Blanche’s requisition.”

“How awfully jolly,” exclaimed Louisa Stapleton, pulling out the fringe of curls upon her forehead.

“It was nothing of the kind, Miss Stapleton. In point of fact it was about as disagreeable an experience as I remember. But to tell the tale connectedly I shall have to go back many, many years, to the time when the old mansion that sheltered me night before last was in its prime of hospitable attraction for every one that strayed within its gates. About a day’s ride from here is ‘Betsey’s Pride,’ for by this quaint appellation is still known the house built for his young wife by a wealthy Virginian land-owner, just before this century came in.”

“Not old enough by half,” exclaimed Blanche, pouting.

“Truth will out, however,” answered the narrator, accustomed to lawless interruptions. “It is a fine old house built like Lee’s birthplace, Stratford, in the form of a letter H. The cross of the H is a large salon, now absolutely bare of furniture. At the juncture of each wing with the house arises a pile of chimneys, serving to support a pavilion on the roof, where in old days a darky band used to play for the gentry, of an evening. There was a fish-pond up there, too, in my boyhood; and there still is, at the back of the house, an old ruined garden. When a lad I loved nothing better than a visit in vacation to ‘Betsey’s Pride.’ The oldest son of this house was my chum at the University, and also a kinsman, though remote. We will call him, for dramatic purposes, Llewellyn Chester. Chester was always a handsome, easy-going, free-handed fellow, brought up to consider himself the master of abundant means. His people gave him the best education of the times, and in due course sent him to travel abroad, attended only by the ‘boy,’ who in old Virginian fashion had been told off at a very tender age from among the slaves to wait on him. Leander Jameson was the ‘boy’s’ name. Smile if you will, young ladies, but gentle and simple, white and colored, we Virginians always relish fine-sounding names. Leander was a very light mulatto, tall, erect, manly, good-looking as his master, and of astonishing versatility of talent. He could sing, whistle, impersonate any one on the plantation, was an adept in athletic exercises, and had, as we said, the manners of a prince. Chester, dependent on him for so many long years for companionship, treated him with lavish indulgence and generosity. While they were in Paris, where Leander was, of course, received as an equal by his class among the whites, Chester had him take lessons in singing, dancing, fencing, and the like; filled his pockets with money, and turned him loose upon what, as it seems, was a very wild career for both of them.

“When, a few years before the war broke out, I again visited ‘Betsey’s Pride,’ it was to see a woeful change in the circumstances of the returned prodigal, my cousin. Chester’s parents had died, his sisters had lived on there in seclusion, little knowing that his extravagance had wasted all his own and involved their substance. When he finally turned up again, like a bad penny, at their home, it was to linger a few months and die. In his last illness poor Llewellyn was nursed by Leander as no one else could have nursed him. Such fidelity, tenderness! Well, it’s not of that I started out to tell. Llew Chester under the cedars of the family burying-ground, his sisters had to hear that they were ruined in fortune. But, then or since, those two women would never hear a word said against ‘poor Llew.’

“Here comes in,” went on the General, doughtily, “a chapter fortunately not common among the slave-holding families of those days. As the negroes on large plantations went on multiplying and exacting care and outlay, the revenues of their owners were naturally consumed. But it was part of our religion to hold fast to the trust committed to us by our fathers. Nothing but dire want ever made a Virginian of ‘the real sort’ part with a slave for money. When dire want came, so much the worse for slave and master. It was a degradation that bowed down the seller to the earth with shame--to have to part with these people of our black families. If anybody ever tells you to the contrary, Miss Eunice, send him to me to be convinced.”

The General, growing red in the face, winked, gulped, got up and walked up and down the room, tugged at his mustache, then sat down.

“I suppose none of you ever heard of the character as much avoided in the society of decent men with us as the headsman is in France--the negro broker and trader. But there he was, often growing fat and rich on the proceeds of his horrid business; and, like the headsman, when occasion demanded he turned up. Chester had slighted in public one of the most formidable of this fraternity, a man named Israel Johns, a sullen bully, who laid up the slight in silence and bided his time for revenge.

“As it happened, Johns’s opportunity did not come till the breath had left his enemy’s body. When it was known that the Misses Chester would be forced to part with all of their ‘likely’ black people, in order to pay the debts of the estate and live, the deepest feeling was everywhere shown for the pair. My own mother went a two days’ journey on horseback to weep with them. Remember, the oversupply of slaves in Virginia made their buyers very particular to select the best, and it was therefore much feared by the friends of the family that the first man to go off would be Leander Jameson.”

“His master’s friend--intimate! Oh, infamous! I would have starved first!” cried out Eunice, a red spot glowing in either cheek.

“God knows I think so, too, Miss Eunice,” said the old soldier, bowing his head sadly. “But that such things were was part of our burden and our curse.

“A number of us,” he went on presently, “old friends and neighbors, met together and made a purse to buy in Leander for the estate. But we were tricked--outbidden--overruled. The man who got him was, as you may surmise, none other than Israel Johns. We learned afterward that Johns said he would own that nigger if it took every cent he had. I can see him now, the dirty blackguard! A middle-sized, low-browed, swart, powerful fellow, dark as a Spaniard, with thick lips, curly black hair, and black, shifty eyes that couldn’t look you in the face. It was at the county court-house on New Year’s Day where the auction had taken place. When Leander found out who had become his owner his eyes glared like a savage animal’s. I never saw a handsome young face so transformed by rage and despair. A man who stood next to me said carelessly, ‘By Jove! it’s he that looks like the master, and Johns like the man, I am thinking.’

“I will pass over the feelings of all concerned when, in a few days, we heard that Johns had started for New Orleans to sell his prize to the highest bidder. I for one do not enjoy analyses of human emotion under stress. When you know that Chester had promised to free Leander in order to enable the fellow to go back and marry a Creole girl from Martinique whom he had met in Paris, and had died without doing so, you see how the affair stood. What followed is well known to many persons. Johns flaunted down to New Orleans with his chattel; and on the way Leander conceived one of the most daring schemes that was ever carried out to a successful ending. He managed to get his master drunk, and on arriving at New Orleans to actually sell him for a thousand dollars to a buyer before whom Leander had posed as a Virginian planter on his travels, encumbered with a tipsy ruffian he was glad to dispose of cheap.

“The complexion, good manners, educated voice, and easy diction of Leander made this thing possible. Upon receiving, as was agreed, the money down, he at once disappeared; and he has never been heard of since.”

“And Johns? What became of him?” asked the hearers in concert.

“When he came to himself and found out his condition he fought, blustered, was overcome and held in servitude. Finally the law allowed him to institute ‘a freedom suit’; and after many disappointments and delays he was identified as Israel Johns by persons sent from Virginia to New Orleans for that purpose, at Johns’s expense. By the time his freedom was secured and he was restored to his privileges as a white citizen, Leander Jameson was far beyond reach of his vengeance. But Johns’s spirit was broken, and a year later he died.”

“Is all that true?” asked Eunice Hall, who had listened in breathless interest.

“To the best of my belief, yes; you may see certainly that the tale is unvarnished by me. But as I told you, it was only the prelude to a personal experience of mine during the last six and thirty hours. When, night before last, I reached ‘Betsey’s Pride’ after a long day in the saddle, I was kindly greeted by the two little Miss Chesters, who continue to live there in the most frugal way. War, that left over their heads the shell of their father’s mansion, has left them but little else besides. My visit was, in rude fact, one of investigation--to see whether the two ladies were supplied with the necessaries of life, for which they are too proud to ask their friends. After a meal and a conversation that I can’t think of without a feeling like a knife thrust into the heart, they showed me to my room. It was, as I at once saw, the apartment in which their brother Llewellyn had breathed his last, a cold, bare place, the arrangement of its furniture unchanged in all these weary years. Through a crack widened around the window-frame ivy had shot into the room and was curling about the inner sash. The Miss Chesters could not bear to remove this vine. ‘It looked so sweet,’ they said, ‘growing in poor Llew’s room.’ An old negro woman, who brought me a jug of spring-water, hurried out as soon as she had deposited her burden. By the look in her face I knew she believed the place to contain another presence than my own.”

“Now we are coming to the real thing!” exclaimed light-hearted Blanche, clapping her hands gleefully.

“It might be, if I knew how to dress it up in fine words at awesome intervals; but I can’t. I can just tell you the simple truth--that, awakening in the middle of the night I saw, in the moonlight, as plainly as I see you now, the face and figure of Leander Jameson.”

“Good gracious!” cried Eunice, sitting bolt upright, and fixing upon old Dick a fascinated gaze.

“Of course, I had been thinking of him and his master when I fell asleep. Of course, it was an optical illusion,” added the old man. “I have said so to myself a dozen times since it happened.”

“What did you do? What did he do?” queried the listeners in unison.

They could not decide whether or not the General was trying to take them in. But all the same, the girls clutched at each other’s hands, and the young men essayed to put on an air of incredulous superiority as they waited for the climax.

“Frankly speaking,” said the hero of many fights with flesh and blood, “_I_ pulled the clothes over my head. _He_ executed the usual ‘vanishing act.’ When I looked again he was gone. The only occupant of the room beside myself was a rat that seemed to be dragging my boot across the boards of the floor.”

“Was the window open?”

“Wide,” said the General; “and, as it was the usual French window upon the ground floor of a bachelor’s wing, nothing could have been easier for a ghost than to step in and out over the sill. Next morning I examined the premises, but on the soft old green sward of a century that came close to the window outside found no trace of footsteps. The birds were singing in the very room with me; the warm sunshine bathed its every nook and corner. A young heifer, straying up, looked as if she meant to step over the threshold, but desisted. There was no trace or filament of visitation, supernatural or otherwise.”

“Naturally, since you dreamed it,” said Mr. Harry Lemist, convincingly.

“Naturally,” said the General. “I, too, made up my mind to that view of the case. But the whole thing was a curious episode. It brought back the details of my poor friend’s life and death, and of his valet’s reckless and successful stroke for freedom. On my ride back here to-day I have been recalling many instances of the intercourse between Chester and Leander Jameson--things I had long forgotten. One was that, as lads, Chester had his ‘boy’ learn tattooing of an old sailor in the neighborhood. The first result of his accomplishment was the shield of Virginia in blue on Chester’s forearm--‘_Sic semper tyrannis_’ and the rest of it, buried with him, of course--while Leander carried through life, on the outside of his right hand, the crimson image of the swan that is the Chester crest.”

Eunice Hall, self-contained little being that she was, gave at this a galvanic start.

“Why!” she exclaimed, growing pale with excitement, “I have seen it--that hand marked with a crimson swan--only a little while ago! It was the one thrust out to draw in the shutters of the Frenchman’s window. I noticed it particularly.”

“By George--then it _was_ Leander!” cried the General, springing to his feet.

* * * * *

The best efforts of General Ross to trace the fugitive and his wife resulted only in finding that they had boarded a train bound northward, and were by then probably safely in New York, if not, as seemed likely, on the ocean sailing back to Leander Jameson’s adopted home. That the ex-slave had prospered in circumstances his appearance and surroundings left no room to doubt. The General’s idea that, broken in health and knowing himself to be a dying man, Leander had not been able to resist a secret visit to the scene of his birth and of his early tragedy was considered the correct one.

* * * * *

General Dick Ross still makes his annual visit to drink the waters of “Old Blue.” The only time he has been persuaded to cross Mason and Dixon’s line, to pursue his investigations of society, was for the purpose of attending the marriage of Miss Eunice Hall, when that charming enthusiast decided upon concentrating her efforts at reform of the human race upon a single undefended man.

THE THREE MISSES BENEDICT AT YALE

THE THREE MISSES BENEDICT AT YALE

A heavy fall of snow upon the old streets of New Haven had not succeeded in blocking the wheels of progress of that merriest season of the collegiate year, known to the university world as “Prom Week.” For three days a crowd of fair visitors and their chaperons had trod the round of gayeties; had frequented the concerts, germans, teas, and receptions; they were now drawing breath and gathering energy for the last crucial test of physical endurance, the ball called the Junior Promenade.

For, to properly celebrate this time-honored and brilliant affair, custom decrees that the list of thirty or more dances and intermissions printed upon the ball-card presented to each damsel crossing the threshold of this hall of raptures shall, long beforehand, have been filled with names by the brother, cousin, or admirer having the list in charge. It follows naturally that by the time not only all these dances are accomplished but every “intermission” has been spent in an impromptu dance to the music of the band, alternating with the orchestra, night has brightened into dawn.

When the girls are finally induced by their exhausted matrons to withdraw from the giddy whirl, they leave behind a set of men, wild-eyed, and wilted as to shirt-fronts, cuffs, and collars, but undaunted in spirit. These men, the givers of the ball, then go away to their dormitories to snatch an hour or two of slumber before chapel, which has, not infrequently, been attended by beings in ulsters worn over evening clothes. It was to such tireless devotees rather invigorating than depressing to see snowflakes come trooping down upon the final scenes of their three-days’ gayety. Toward nine o’clock P.M. the streets were encumbered by lumbering old hacks pulling up before doors to receive their loads of hooded and cloaked figures, then driving with them at a furious pace to the door of the armory where the “Prom” is given, and dashing off again to secure new fares. The drivers of these vehicles, known by name to most of the students, extend to the university and its doings an almost parental indulgence. To the guests who are aiding to make the occasion brilliant they are suave beyond imagination; solicitous of comfort, descending from their perches to open the carriage doors, and assisting parlously at the elbow of the lady entering or getting out. Little of the evening’s fun is to be theirs, honest fellows, but they are sustained through the chilly vigils of the night by _esprit de corps_ and a brave desire to keep up the credit of their town.

Quite early in the fray one of these hacks disgorged under the armory’s awning a party consisting of a mother, two daughters, and a girl cousin, all three of the young women marked with the same general characteristics of family, but differing in feature and degree of beauty. The mother, a stout, comely body, with diamond butterflies quivering about the base of a tall, black aigrette that, springing from her hair, swept the carriage top as she sat, emerged with a look denoting resolution to carry on the struggle of spirit against flesh to the bitter end. For was not her only son, her pride and joy, leader of the revels as head of the floor committee of the “Prom”? Not for worlds would she have given up the wearying privilege of sitting out the ball. Never, in her own palmiest days, had she drawn near to a scene of gayety with a more proud sense of identification than to-night, when she shone in the reflected glory of her handsome boy!

Jack Benedict was, on his part, modest, as becomes the truly great! An immense favorite with his class, he had been one of those fellows who sail serenely through college life, winning, without apparent effort, honors toiled for by others without success. A good scholar, an athlete of renown, frank, cordial, sympathetic, he was put forward by the vote of his comrades whenever opportunity occurred to represent them before the world; the election to his present post being upon one of these occasions.

Fresh-faced, clear-eyed, smiling, dressed in immaculate attire, the tall young hero advanced to meet his mother and, giving her his arm, conducted the party along the length of the large hall to a box fitted up for the friends of the committee of management. The girls following them were immediately surrounded by a throng of men, consulting their dance programmes and receiving with pride their compliments upon the charming arrangements of the hall. It had already been decided among the opinion-makers that the three Misses Benedict were the stars of the festive week, and their approbation of the scene was generally awaited.

The vast inclosure of the armory was lined to its arched roof with breadths of semi-transparent stuff, alternatively pale lavender and yellow in tint, giving it a delightfully fresh and blossomy effect. From the ceiling, lighted by veiled electric bulbs, depended a racing-shell filled with flowers and a floral football, emblems of the University’s late prowess in the athletic world. From high stands on either side of the hall the band, or else the orchestra, clashed forth unceasingly enlivening strains. Beneath one or the other of these draped eyries were seen to disappear during the progress of the ball panting and perspiring men, who went away wilted after saltatory toil--but returned arrayed in the glory of fresh linen, white collars, and cuffs immaculate. Around the walls, hung with tapestry and placques of flowers, were ranged the boxes severally sold at auction to the highest bidder among the classmen who desired thus proudly to extol the ladies of their visiting families and parties. In these dainty nooks were assembled treasures from many a college sitting-room. Easy-chairs, rugs, lamps, draperies, tables, cushions--above all, cushions!--of every size, material, and color, were brought hither by their owners or borrowers from acquiescent friends, to make resting-places for the chaperons, and, when possible, the girls.

The wide, crash-covered floor, soon covered with whirling figures, became a dazzling kaleidoscope. The suggestion presented by the sight was one of extraordinary brilliancy and lightness. It was as if the Genius of American youth were abroad and at his best. No face there that did not gleam with happiness, no foot that did not spring with rapturous life. Of those encumbrances of an ordinary ball-room, the sad, the sour, the world-weary, the middle-aged, none was discernible. The young men and maidens prominent in this function, gathered from far and near in the broad Republic, were types of blended races, or pure Americans such as one may hardly see elsewhere in an Eastern festivity; and the conventional uniformity of a dance in New York, Boston, or Philadelphia was thus most agreeably varied. And through all was apparent to older eyes the joy of living and being that comes only in the first quarter of the century of life.

“Are you satisfied with it, madre?” asked Benedict, as he stopped in his evening’s toil to bend affectionately over his mother, where she sat in front of the committee-box, her satin and jet rustling in the breeze created by an ostrich-feathered fan.

“Satisfied? Indeed I am! It is a perfectly enchanting scene,” said the biased critic. “And your decorations are really admirable. I never saw such a well-managed dance. But, my dearest boy, can’t you sit down and take a moment’s rest? You will really wear yourself out.”

“No fear of that,” quoth Jack, inflating his broad chest. “After to-night we shall all lapse into ‘innocuous desuetude,’ and there’ll be full time to repose. I hope you and the other mothers can hold out. You won’t see much of your charges, I’m afraid.”