Andrew the Glad.
by Maria Thompson Daviess.
CHAPTER I
THE HEART TRAP
"There are some women who will brew mystery from the decoction of even a very simple life. Matilda is one of them," remarked the major to himself as he filled his pipe and settled himself before his high-piled, violet-flamed logs. "It was waxing strong in her this morning and an excitement will arrive shortly. Now I wonder--"
"Howdy, Major," came in a mockingly lugubrious voice from the hall, and David Kildare blew into the room. He looked disappointedly around, dropped into a chair and lowered his voice another note.
"Seen Phoebe?" he demanded.
"No, haven"t you?" answered the major as he lighted his pipe and regarded the man opposite him with a large smile of welcome.
"Not for three days, hand-running. She"s been over to see Andy with Mrs.
Matilda twice, and I"ve missed her both times. Now, how"s that for luck?"
"Well," said the major reflectively, "in the terms of modern parlance, you certainly are up against it. And did it ever occur to you that a man with three ribs broken and a dislocated collar-bone, who has written a play and a sprinkle of poems, is likely to interest Phoebe Donelson enormously? There is nothing like poetry to implant a divine pa.s.sion, and Andrew is undoubtedly of poetic stamp."
"Oh, poetry--hang! It"s more Andy"s three ribs than anything else. He just looks pale and smiles at all of "em. He always did have yellow dog eyes, the sad kind. I"d like to smash all two dozen of his ribs," and Kildare slashed at his own st.u.r.dy legs with his crop. He had dropped in with his usual morning"s tale of woe to confide to Major Buchanan, and he had found him, as always, ready to hand out an incendiary brand of sympathy.
"He ought not to have more than twenty-three; one on the right side should be missing. Some woman"s got it--maybe Phoebe," said the major with deadly intent.
"Nothing of the kind. I"m shy a rib myself and Phoebe is _it_. Don"t I get a pain in my side every time I see her? It"s the real psychic thing, only she doesn"t seem to get hold of her end of the wire like she might."
"Don"t trust her, David, don"t trust her! You see his being injured in Panama, building bridges for his country, while you sat here idly reading the newspapers about it, has had its appeal. I know it"s dangerous, but you ought to want Phoebe to soothe his fevered brow. Nothing is too good for a hero this side of Mason and Dixon"s, my son." The major eyed his victim with calculating coolness, gaging just how much more of the baiting he would stand. He was disappointed to see that the train of explosives he had laid failed to take fire.
"Well, he"s being handed out a choice bunch of Mason-Dixon attentions.
They are giving him the cheer-up all day long. When I left, Mrs. Shelby was up there talking to him, and Mrs. Cherry Lawrence and Tom had just come in. Mrs. Cherry had brought him several fresh eggs. She had got them from Phoebe! I sent them to her from the farm this morning. Rode out and coaxed the hens for them myself. Now, isn"t a brainstorm up to me?"
"Well, I don"t know," answered the major in a judicial tone of voice.
"You wouldn"t have them neglect him, would you?"
"Well, what about me?" demanded David dolefully. "I haven"t any green eyes, "cause I"m trusting Andy, _not_ Phoebe; but neglect is just withering my leaves. I haven"t seen her alone for two weeks. She is always over there with Mrs. Matilda and the rest "soothing the fevered brow." Say, Major, give Mrs. Matilda the hint. The chump isn"t really sick any more. Hint that a little less--"
"David, sir," interrupted the major, "it takes more than a hint to stop a woman when she takes a notion to nurse an attractive man, a sick lion one at that. And depend upon it, it is the poetry that makes them hover him, not the ribs."
"Well, you just stop her and that"ll stop them," said David wrathfully.
"David Kildare," answered the major dryly, "I"ve been married to her nearly forty years and I"ve never stopped her doing anything yet.
Stopping a wife is one of the bride-notions a man had better give up early in the matrimonial state--if he expects to hold the bride. And bride-holding ought to be the life-job of a man who is rash enough to undertake one."
"Do you think Phoebe and bride will ever rhyme together, Major?" asked David in a tone of deepest depression. "I can"t seem to hear them ever jingle."
"Yes, Dave, the Almighty will meter it out to her some day, and I hope He will help you when He does. I can"t manage my wife. She"s a modern woman.
Now, what are we going to do about them?" and the major smiled quizzically at the perturbed young man standing on the rug in front of the fire.
"Well," answered Kildare with a spark in his eyes, as he flecked a bit of mud from his boots which were splashed from his morning ride, "when I get Phoebe Donelson, I"m going to whip her!" And very broad and tall and strong was young David but not in the least formidable as to expression.
"Dave, my boy," answered the major in a tone of the deepest respect, "I hope you will do it, if you get the chance; but you won"t! Thirty-eight years ago last summer I felt the same way, but I"ve had a long time to make up my mind to it; and I haven"t done it yet."
"Anyway," rejoined his victim, "there"s just this to it; she has got to accept me kindly, affectionately and in a ladylike manner or I"m going to be the villain and make some sort of a rough house to frighten her into it."
"David," said the major with emphasis, "don"t count on frightening a woman into a compliance in an affair of the affections. Don"t you know they will risk having their hearts suspended on a hair-line between heaven and h.e.l.l and enjoy it? Now, my wife--"
"Oh, Mrs. Matilda never could have been like that," interrupted David miserably.
"Boy," answered the major solemnly, "if I were to give you a succinct account of the writhings of my soul one summer over a California man, the agony you are enduring would seem the extremity of insignificance."
"Heavenly hope, Major, did you have to go up against the other man game, too? I seem to have been standing by with a basket picking up chips of Phoebe"s lovers for a long lifetime; Tom, Hob, Payt, widowers and flocks of new fledges. But I had an idea that you must have been a first-and-only with Mrs. Matilda."
"Well, it sometimes happens, David, that the individuality of all of a woman"s first loves get so merged into that of the last that it would be difficult for her to differentiate them herself; and it is best to keep her happily employed so she doesn"t try."
"Well, all I can say for you, Major," interrupted Kildare with a laugh, "is that your forty years" work shows some. Your Mrs. Buchanan is what I call a finished product of a wife. I"ll never do it in the world. I can get up and talk a jury into seeing things my way, but I get cross-brained when I go to put things to Phoebe. That reminds me, that case on old Jim Cross for getting tangled up with some fussy hens in Latimer"s hen-house week before last is called for to-day at twelve sharp. I"m due to put the old body through and pay the fine and costs; only the third time this year. I"m thinking of buying him a hen farm to save myself trouble.
Good-by, sir!"
"David, David," laughed the major, "beware of your growing responsibilities! Cap Hobson reported that sensation of yours before the grand jury over that negro and policeman trouble. The darkies will put up your portrait beside that of Father Abe on Emanc.i.p.ation Day and you will be in danger of pa.s.sing down to posterity by the public-spirit-fame chute. Your record will be in the annals of the city if you don"t mind!"
"Not much danger, Major," answered David with a smile. "I"m just a glad man with not balance enough to run the rail of any kind of heavy track affairs."
"David," said the major with a sudden sadness coming into his voice and eyes, "one of the greatest men I ever knew we called the glad man--the boy"s father, Andrew Sevier. We called him Andrew, the Glad. Something has brought it all back to me to-day and with your laugh you reminded me of him. The tragedy of it all!"
"I"ve always known what a sorrow it was to you, Major, and it is the bitterness that is eating the heart out of Andy. What was it all about exactly, sir? I have always wanted to ask you." David looked into the major"s stern old eyes with such a depth of sympathy in his young ones that a barrier suddenly melted and with the tone of bestowing an honor the old fire-eater told the tale of the sorrow of his youth.
"Gaming was in his blood, David, and we all knew it and protected him from high play always. We were impoverished gentlemen, who were building fences and restoring war-devastated lands, and we played in our shabby club with a minimum stake and a maximum zest for the sport. But that night we had no control over him. He had been playing in secret with Peters Brown for weeks and had lost heavily. When we had closed up the game, he called for the dice and challenged Brown to square their account. They threw again and again with luck on the same grim side. I saw him stake first his horses, then his bank account, and lose.
"Hayes Donelson and I started to remonstrate but he silenced us with a look. Then he drew a hurried transference of his Upper c.u.mberland property and put it on the table. They threw again and he lost! Then he smiled and with a steady hand wrote a conveyance of his home and plantation, the last things he had, as we knew, and laid that on the table."
"No, Major," exclaimed David with positive horror in his voice.
"Yes, it was madness, boy," answered the major. "Brown turned his ivories and we all held our breath as we read his four-three. A mad joy flamed in Andrew"s face and he turned his cup with a steady wrist--and rolled threes. We none of us looked at Brown, a man who had led another man in whose veins ran a madness, where in his ran ice, on to his ruin. We followed Andrew to the street to see him ride away in a gray drizzle to a gambled home--and a wife and son.
"That morning deeds were drawn, signed, witnessed and delivered to Brown in his office. Then--then"--the major"s thin, powerful old hands grasped the arm of his chair--"we found him in the twilight under the clump of cedars that crowned the hill which overlooked Deep-mead Farm--broad acres of land that the Seviers had had granted them from Virginia--_dead_, his pistol under his shoulder and a smile on his face. Just so he had looked as he rode at the head of our crack gray regiment in that h.e.l.l-reeking charge at Perryville, and it was such a smile we had followed into the trenches at Franklin. Stalwart, dashing, joyous Andrew, how we had all loved him, our man-of-smiles!"
"Can anything ever make it up to you, Major?" asked David softly. As he spoke he refilled the major"s pipe and handed it to him, not appearing to notice how the lean old hand shook.
"You do, sir," answered the major with a spark coming back into his eyes, "you and your gladness and the boy and his--sadness--and Phoebe most of all. But don"t let me keep you from your hen-roost defense--I agree with you that a hen farm will be the cheapest course for you to take with old Cross. Give him my respects, and good-by to you." The major"s dismissal was gallant, and David went his way with sympathy and admiration in his gay heart for the old fire-eater whose ashes had been so stirred.
The major resumed his contemplation of the fire. Hearty burning logs make good companions for a philosopher like the major, and such times when his depths were troubled he was wont to trust to them for companionship.
But into any mood of absorption, no matter how deep, the major was always ready to welcome Mrs. Matilda, and his expectations on the subject of her adventures had been fully realized. As usual she had begun her tale in the exact center of the adventure with full liberty left herself to work back to the beginning or forward to the close.
"And the mystery of it all, Matilda, is the mystery of love--warm, contradictory, cruel, human love that the Almighty puts in the heart of a man to draw the unreasoning heart of a woman; sometimes to bruise and crush it, seldom to kill it outright. Mary Caroline only followed her call," answered the major, responding to her random lead patiently.
"I know, Major; yes, I know," answered his wife as she laid her hand on the arm of his chair. "Mary Caroline struggled against it but it was stronger than she was. It wasn"t the loving and marrying a man who had been on the other side--so many girls did marry Union officers as soon as they could come back down to get them--but the _kind_ of enemy he was!"