For the time being the music in the drawing-room had stopped and David and Caroline were deep in an animated conversation.
"The trouble about it is that I am about to have my light put out," David was complaining as he sat on the piano-stool, glaring at a vase of unoffending roses on a table. "Being a ray of sunshine around the house for a sick poet is no job for a runabout child like me."
"But he"s so much better now, David, that I should think you would be perfectly happy. Though of course you are still a little uneasy about him." As Caroline Darrah spoke she swayed the long-stemmed rose she held in her hand and tipped it against one of its mates in the vase.
"Uneasy, nothing! There"s not a thing in the world the matter with him; ribs are all in commission and his collar-bone hitched on again. It"s just a case of moonie sulks with him. He never was the real glad boy, but now he runs entirely to poetry and gloom. He won"t go anywhere but over here to chew book-rags with the major or to read goo to Phoebe, which she pa.s.ses on to you. Wish I"d let him die in the swamps; chasing away to Panama for him was my mistake, I see." And David ruffled a young rose that drooped confidingly over toward him.
"Why did he ever go to Panama? Why does he build bridges and things?
Other people like you and me can do that sort of thing; but he--," and Caroline Darrah raised her eyes full of naive questioning.
"Heavens, woman, poetry never in the world would grub-stake six feet of husky man! But that"s just like you and Phoebe and all the other women.
You would like to feed me to the alligators, but the poet must sit in the shade and chew eggs and grape juice. You trample on my feelings, child,"
and David sighed plaintively.
Caroline eyed him a moment across the rose she held to her lips, then laughed delightedly.
"Indeed, indeed, I couldn"t stand losing you, David, nor could Phoebe.
Don"t imagine it!" And Caroline confessed her affection for him with the navete with which a child offers a flower.
The absolute entente cordiale which had existed between her and Phoebe from the moment Mrs. Buchanan had presented them to each other in the dusk-shadowed library, had been extended to include David Kildare. He was duly appreciative of her almost appealing friendship, chaffed her about the three governors, depended upon her to further his tumultuous suit, admired her beauty, insisted upon it in season and out, and initiated her into the social intricacies of his gay set with the greatest glee.
"I don"t trust you one little bit, Caroline Darrah Brown," David broke in on her moment"s silent appreciation of him and his friendliness. "You look at him kinder partial-like, too."
"Oh, one _must_ admire him, his poems are so lovely! I have watched for them from the first one years ago. Do you remember the one where he--"
"Don"t remember a single line of a single one, and don"t want to!
Phoebe"s always quoting them at me. She"s got a book of "em. See if I don"t smash him up some day if I have to listen to much more of it."
David"s face was a study in the contradictions of a tormented grin.
Caroline eyed him again for a moment across the rose and then they both laughed delightedly. But David was for the pressing of his point just the same.
"Dear Daughter of the Three," he pleaded, "can"t you help me out?
Mollycoddle him a bit. Do, now, that"s a good child! Keep him "interested", as _she_ calls it! You are quite as good to look at as Phoebe and are enough more--more,"--and David paused for a word that would compare Caroline"s appeal and Phoebe"s brisk challenge.
"Yes, I understand. I really am _more_ so; but how can I help you out if he never even sees me when I"m there?" And Caroline raised eyes to him that held a hint of wistfulness in their banter.
"The old mole-eyed grump never sees anybody nor anything. But let"s plot a scheme. This three-handed game doesn"t suit me; promise to be good and sit in. I haven"t had Phoebe to myself for the long time. He needs a heart interest of his own--I"m tired of lending him mine. You"re not busy--that"s a sweet girl! Don"t make me feel I inherited you for nothing," said David in a most beguiling voice as he moved a shade nearer to her.
"I promise, I promise! If you take that tone with me, I"m afraid not to: but I feel you mistake my powers," and Caroline laid the rose across her knee and dropped her long lashes over her eyes. "I think I"ll fail with your poet; something tells me it is a vain task. Let"s put it in the hands of the G.o.ds. It may interest them."
"No, I"m going to shoo him in here right now," answered David, bent upon the immediate accomplishment of his scheme for the relief of his very independent lady-love from her friendly durance. "You just wait and get a line of moon-talk ready for him. Keep that rose in your hand and handle your eyes carefully."
"Oh, but it"s impossible!" exclaimed Caroline with real alarm in her voice. She rose and the flower fell shattered at her feet. "I"m going to have a little business talk with the major before Captain Cantrell and the other gentlemen come. I have an appointment with him. Won"t you leave it to the G.o.ds?"
"No, for the G.o.ds might not know Phoebe. She"d hunt a hot brick for a sick kitten if I was freezing to death, and besides I need her in my business at this very moment."
"Caroline, my dear," said the major from the door into the library, "from the strenuosity in the tones of David Kildare I judge he is discussing his usual topic. Phoebe and Andrew have just gone and left their good-bys for you both."
"Now, Major," demanded David indignantly, "how could you let her get away when you had her here?"
"Young man," answered the major, "the constraining of a woman of these times is well-nigh impossible, as you should have found out after your repeated efforts in that direction."
"That"s it, Major, you can"t hang out any signal for them now; you have to grab them as they go past, swing out into s.p.a.ce and pray for strength to hold on. I believe if you stood still they would come and feed out of your hand a heap quicker than they will be whistled down--if you can get the nerve to try "em. Think I"ll go and see." And David took his studiedly unhurried departure.
"David Kildare translates courtship into strange modern terms," remarked the major as he led Caroline into the library and seated her in Mrs.
Matilda"s low chair near his own.
"The roses are blooming this morning, my dear," he said, looking with delight at the soft color in her cheeks and the stars in her black-lashed, violet eyes. A shaft of sunlight glinted in the gold of her hair which was coiled low and from which little tendrils curled down on her white neck.
She was very dainty and lovely, was Caroline Darrah Brown, with the loveliness of a windflower and young with the innocent youngness of an April day. She was slightly different from any girl the major had ever known and he observed her type with the greatest interest.
She had been tutored and trained and French-convented and specialized by adepts in the inculcating of every air and grace with which the women of vaster wealth are expected to be equipped. Money and the girl had been the ruling pa.s.sions of Peters Brown"s life and the one had been all for the serving purposes of the other. It had been the one aim of his existence to bring to a perfect flowering the new-born bud his southern wife had left him, and he had succeeded. Yet she seemed so slight a woman-thing to be bearing the burden of a great wealth and a great loneliness that the major"s eyes grew very tender as he asked:
"What is it, clear, a crumpled rose-leaf?"
"Major," she answered as her slender fingers opened and closed a book on the table near her, "did you realize that two months have pa.s.sed since I came to--to--"
"Came _home_, child," prompted the major as he touched lightly the restless hand near his own.
"I am beginning to feel as if it might be that, and yet I don"t know--not until I talk to you about it all. Everybody has been good to me. I feel that they really care and I love it--and them all! But, Major, did you--know--my father--well?"
"Yes, my dear." He answered, looking her straight in the eyes, "I knew Peters Brown and had pleasantly hostile relations with him always."
"This memorandum--I got it together before I came down here, while I was settling up his estate. It is the list of the investments he made while in the South for the twenty years after the war. I want to talk them over with you." She looked at the major squarely and determinedly.
"Fire away," he answered with courage in his voice that belied the feeling beneath it.
"I see that in eighteen seventy-nine he bought lumber lands from Hayes Donelson. The price seems to have been practically nominal in view of what he sold a part of them for three years later. Was Hayes Donelson Phoebe"s father? I want to know all about him."
"My dear, you are giving a large order for ancient history--Captain Donelson couldn"t fill it himself if he were alive. Those lumber lands were just a stick or two that he threw on the grand bonfire. He sold everything he had and inst.i.tuted and ran the most inflammatory newspaper in the South. He gloried in an att.i.tude of non-reconstruction and died when Phoebe was a year old. Her mother raised Phoebe by keeping boarders, but failed to raise the mortgage on the family home. She died trying and Phoebe has kept her own sleek little head above water since her sixteenth year by reporting and editing Dimity Doings on the paper her father founded. I think she has learned a pretty good swimming stroke by this time. It is still a measure ahead of that of David Kildare and--"
"Oh, you _must_ help me make her take what would have been a fair price for those lands, Major. I"m determined--I--I--" Caroline"s voice faltered but her head was well up. "I"m determined; but we"ll talk of that later.
He bought the Cantrell land and divided it up into the first improved city addition. Was it, was it "carpetbagging"?" She flushed as she said the word--"Was it pressure? Were the Cantrells in need?"
"Not for long, my dear, not for long! Mrs. Tom took that money and bought cows for the east farm, ran a dairy in opposition to Matilda"s and then got her into a combine to ship gilt-edge to Cincinnati. I expected them to skim the milky way any night and put a star brand of b.u.t.ter on the market. They made a great deal of money and were proportionately hard to manage. Young Tom inherits from his mother and makes paying combines in stocks. Old Tom hasn"t a thing to do but sit in the sun and spin tales about battles he was and was not in. It wouldn"t do to drag up that pinched period of his life; he is too expansive now to be made to recall it." The major smiled invitingly as if he had hopes of an interested question that would turn the trend of the conversation, but Caroline Darrah held herself sternly to the matter in hand.
"And you, I see a sale of half of your land at--"
"Caroline Darrah Brown, look me straight in the eyes," interrupted the major in a commanding voice. He sat up and bent his keen black eyes that sparkled under his heavy white brows with absolute luminosity upon the girl at his side. When aroused the major was a live wire and he was buckling on his sword to do battle with a woman-trouble, and a dire one.
"Now," he continued, "I"m going to say things to you that you are to understand and remember, young woman. Your father did come down among us with what you have heard called a "carpetbag" in his hands, but it wasn"t an _empty_ one: and while the sums he handed out to each of us might be considered inadequate, still they were a purchasing power at a time when things were congested for the lack of any circulating medium whatever. True, I sold him half my thousand acres for a song; but the song fenced the other half, bought implements and stock, and made Matilda possible. She was eighteen and I was twenty-eight when we joined forces and it was decidedly to the tune of your father"s "song". It was the same with the rest of his--friends. You must see that in the painful processes of reconstructing us the carpetbag had its uses. If it went away plethoric with coal and iron and lumber, it left a little gold in its wake. And Peters Brown--"
"Major," said Caroline in a brave voice, "it killed him, the memory of it and not being able to bring me back to her people. He was changed and he realized that he left me very much alone in the world. If there had been any of her immediate family alive we might have felt differently--but her friends--I didn"t know that I would be welcomed. Now--now--I begin to hope. I want to give some of it back! I have so much--"
"Caroline, child," answered the major with a smile that was infinitely tender, "we don"t need it! We"ve had a hand-to-hand fight to inherit the land of our fathers but we"re building fortunes fast; we and the youngsters. The gray line has closed up its ranks and toed hard marks until it presents a solid front once more; some of it bent and shaky but supported on all sides by keen young blood. A solid front, I say, and a friendly one, flying no banners of bitterness--don"t you like us?" and the smile broadened until it warmed the very blood in Caroline Darrah"s heart.
"Yes," she said as she lifted her eyes to his and laid both her hands in the lean strong one he held out for her then, "and all that awful feeling has gone completely. I feel--feel new born!"
"And isn"t it a great thing that we mortals are given a few extra natal days? If we were born all at one time we couldn"t so well enjoy the processes. Now, I intend to a.s.sume that fate has laid you on my door-step and--"