"Oh, bless your dear soul, mother, Providence"ll be only too glad! yes, I"ve a notion to try thinking. Fact is, I"ve begun already. Now, you love solitude----"
"Ah, John!"
"Well, at any rate, you can think best when you"re alone."
"O John!"
"Well, father could. I can"t. I need to rub against men. You don"t."
"Oh!--h--h--John!" But when Mrs. March saw the intent was only figurative she drew her lips close and dropped her eyes.
Her son reflected a minute and spoke again. "Why, mother, just that Yankee"s being here peeping around and asking his scared-to-death questions has pulled my wits together till I wonder where they"ve been.
Oh, it"s so! It"s not because he"s a Yankee. It"s simply because he"s in with the times. He knows what"s got to come and what"s got to go, and how to help them do it so"s to make them count! He belongs--pshaw--he belongs to a live world. Now, here in this sleepy old Dixie----"
"Has it come to that, John?"
"Yes, it has, and it"s cost a heap sight more than it"s come to, because I didn"t let it come long ago. I wouldn"t look plain truth in the face for fear of going back on Rosemont and Suez, and all the time I"ve been going back on Widewood!" The speaker smote the family Bible with Leggett"s doc.u.ment. His mother wept.
"Oh! golly," mumbled John.
"Oh! my son!"
"Why, what"s the trouble, mother?"
Mrs. March could not tell him. It was not merely his blasphemies. There seemed to be more hope of sympathy from the damaged ceiling, and she moaned up to it,
"My son a Radical!"
He sprang to his feet. "Mother, take that insult back! For your own sake, take it back! I hadn"t a thought of politics. If my words implied it they played me false!"
Mrs. March was anguished wonder. "Why, what else could they mean?"
"Anything! I don"t know! I was only trying to blurt out what I"ve been thinking out, concerning our private interests. For I"ve thought out and found out--these last few days--more things that can be done, and must be done, and done right off with these lands of ours----"
"O John! Is that your swift revenge?"
"Why, mother, dear! Revenge for what? Who on?"
"For nothing, John; on widowed, helpless me!"
"Great Scott! mother, as I"ve begged you fifty times, I beg you now again, just tell me what to do or undo."
"Please don"t mock me, John. You"re the dictator now, by the terms of the will. They give you the legal rights, and the legal rights are all that count--with men. I"m in your power."
John laughed. "I wish you"d tell the dictator what to do."
"Too late, my son, you"ve taken the counsel of your country"s enemies."
She rose to leave the room. The son slapped his thigh.
""Pon my soul, mother, you must excuse me. Here"s a letter.
"Has Jeff-Jack accepted another poem?" he asked, as she read. "I wish he"d pay for it."
She did not say, though the missive must have ended very kindly, for in spite of herself she smiled.
"Ah, John! your vanity is so large it can include even your mother. I wish I had some of it; I might believe what my friends tell me. But maybe it"s vanity in me not to think they know best." She let John press her hand upon his forehead.
"I wish I could know," she continued. "I yearn for wise counsel. O son!
why do we, both of us, so distrust and shun our one only common friend?
He could tell us what to do, son; and, oh, how we need some one to tell us!"
John dropped the hand. "I don"t need Jeff-Jack. He"s got to need me."
"Oh, presumptuous boy! John, you might say Mr. Ravenel. He"s old enough to be your father."
"No, he"s not! At any rate, that"s one thing he"ll never be!"
The widow flared up. "I can say that, sir, without your prompting."
"Why, mother! Why, I no more intended----"
"John, spare me! Oh, no, you were brutal merely by accident! I thank you! I _must_ thank you for pointing your unfeeling hints at the most invincib--I mean inveterate--bachelor in the three counties."
"Inveterate lover, you"d better say. He marries Fannie Halliday next March. The General"s telling every Tom, d.i.c.k and Harry to-day."
"John, I don"t believe it! It can"t be! I know better!"
"I wish you did, but they told me themselves, away last July, standing hand in hand. Mother, he"s got no more right to marry her----"
"Than you have! And he knows it! For John, John! There never was a more pitiful or needless mismatch! Why, he could have--but it"s none of my business, only--" she choked.
"No, of course not," said the son, emotionally, "and it"s none of mine, either, only--humph!" He rose and strode about. "Why she could just as easily----Oh, me!" He jostled a chair. Mrs. March flinched and burst into tears.
"Oh, good heavens! mother, what have I done now? I know I"m coa.r.s.e and irreverent and wilful and surly and healthy, and have got the big-head and the Lord knows what! But I swear I"ll stop everything bad and be everything good if you"ll just quit off sniv--weeping!"
Strange to say, this reasonable and practicable proposition did not calm either of them.
"I"ll even go with you to Jeff-Jack and ask his advice--oh!
Jane-Anne-Maria! _now_ what"s broke?"
"Only a mother"s heart!" She looked up from her handkerchief. "Go seek his advice if you still covet it; I never trusted him; I only feared I might doubt him unjustly. But now I know his intelligence, no less than his integrity, is beneath the contempt of a Christian woman. I leave you to your books. My bed----"
"O mother, I wasn"t reading! Come, stay; I"ll be as entertaining as a circus."
"I can"t; I"m all unstrung. Let me go while I can still drag----"
John rose. A horse"s tread sounded. "Now, who can that be?"
He listened again, then rolled up his fists and growled between his teeth.