lam" turn to me in de middle ob de night an" say ter me, Sheba, you will took keer on my chile ef it libe, an" I say to her "fore de Lawd dat I would. An" I did too. Dat po" little moderless and faderless chile lay on my bosom till I lubed it fer hersef, and Missy Mara neber gwine to hab trubble when I ain"t dar."
Aun" Sheba"s voice had been reaching a higher and higher key under the influence of reminiscence and indignation. Although her husband was in dire trepidation he felt that this point was too serious to be yielded without a desperate effort. He had been put on short allowance once before when his wife had gone to help take care of Mara in a severe illness, and now he had a presentiment that Aun" Sheba would try to help support the girl and her great-aunt as well as himself. Such an attempt threatened privations which were harrowing even to contemplate, and in a sort of desperation he resolved once more to a.s.sert his marital position. "Aun"
Sheba," he began with much dignity, "I"se been bery easy an" bendin" like ter you. I"se gib you you"se own head dead agin de principles ob Scripter which say dat de husban" am de head ob de wife--"
"Mister Buggone," interrupted Aun" Sheba in a pa.s.sion which was bursting all restraint, "you"se wrestin" Scripter to you"se own "struction. Ef you am de head ob dis fam"ly, I"se gwine ter sit down an fole my hans, an you can jes" git out an earn my libin" an" yours too. Git up dar now, an"
bring in de wood an" de kinlin" fer de mawnin", an" when mawnin" come, you make de fiah. Arter breakfas" you start right off ter work, and I"se sit on de do" step and talk to de neighbos. You shall hab all de headin ob de house you wants, but you can"t hab de "sition widout de "sponsibilities.
I"se gwine now to take a res" an" be "sported," and the irate wife filled her pipe, sat down and smoked furiously.
Uncle Sheba was appalled at the result of his Scriptural argument. He would like to be king by divine right without any responsibilities. His one thought now was to escape until the storm blew over and his wife"s tolerant good-nature resumed its wonted sway. Shuffling cautiously around to the door he remarked meekly as he held it ajar, "I reckon I"ll drap in at de prar-meetin", fer I tole brudder Simpkins I"d gib dem a lif" dis ebenin"."
His heart misgave him as he heard his wife bound up and bolt the door after him, but he was a philosopher who knew the value of time in remedying many of the ills of life. It must be admitted that he could not get into the spirit of the meeting, and Brother Simpkins remarked rather severely at its close, "Mister Buggone, I"se feared you"se zeal am languishin"."
Uncle Sheba"s forebodings increased as he saw that his house was dark, and he fell into something like panic when he found that the door was still bolted. He knocked gently at first, then louder and louder, adding to the uproar by calls and expostulations. A light appeared in the adjacent cottage, and Kern Watson, his son-in-law, came out. "Wat de matter now, Uncle Sheba?" he asked. "Does yer wan" ter bring de perlice? You"se been takin" a drap too much again, I reckon."
"No, I"se only been to prar-meetin", and Aun" Sheba jes" dun gone and bolt me out."
"Well, you"se been cuttin" up some shine, an" dat"s a fac". Come in an"
stop you noise. You can sleep on de lounge. We don" want to pay ten dollahs in de mawnin to get you out ob de caboose."
Uncle Sheba was glad to avail himself of this rather equivocal hospitality, and eagerly sought to win Kern"s sympathy by relating his grievance. His son-in-law leaned against the chimney-side that he might, in his half-dressed condition, enjoy the warmth of the coals covered with ashes on the hearth, and listened. He was a tall, straight negro of powerful build, and although his features were African, they were not gross in character. The candle on the mantel near him brought out his profile in fine silhouette, while his quiet steady eyes indicated a nature not stirred by trifles.
"You"se a "publican, Kern, an" you knows dat we culled people got ter take keer ob ourselves."
"Yes, I"se a Republican," said Kern, "but wat dat got ter do wid dis matter? Is Aun" Sheba gwine ter take any ob your money? Ef she set her heart on helpin" her ole Missus an" young Missy an" arn de money herself, whose business is it but hers? I"se a Republican because I belebe in people bein" free, wedder dey is white or black, but I ain"t one ob dem kin" ob Republicans dat look on white folks as inemies. Wot we do widout dem, an" wat dey do widout us? All talk ob one side agin de toder is fool talk. Ef dere"s any prosperity in dis lan" we got ter pull tergedder.
You"se free, Uncle Sheba, an" dere ain"t a man in Charleston dat kin hender you from goin" to work termorrow."
"I reckon I"se try ter git a wink ob slepe, Kern," responded Uncle Sheba plaintively. "My narbes been so shook up dat my rheumatiz will be po"ful bad for a spell."
Kern knew the futility of further words, and also betook himself to rest.
With Aun" Sheba, policy had taken the place of pa.s.sion. Through a knot-hole in her cabin she had seen her husband admitted to her son-in-law"s dwelling, and so her mind was at rest. "Unc," she muttered, "forgits his "sper"ence at de prar-meetin"s bery easy, but he mus" have a "sper"ence to-night dat he won"t forgit. I neber so riled in my bawn days.
Ef he tinks I can sit heah and see him go"mandizin" when my honey lam"
Mara hungry, he"ll fin" out."
Before the dawn on the following day, Uncle Sheba had had time for many second thoughts, and when his wife opened the door he brought in plenty of kindlings and wood. Aun" Sheba accepted these marks of submission in grim silence, resolving that peace and serenity should come about gradually.
She relented so far, however, as to give him an extra slice of bacon for breakfast, at which token of returning toleration Uncle Sheba took heart again. Having curtly told him to clear the table, Aun" Sheba proceeded to make from the finest of flour the delicate cakes which she always sold fresh and almost warm from her stove, and before starting out on her vending tour of the streets, the store-room was locked against the one burglar she feared.
CHAPTER IV
MARA
On the same evening which witnessed Uncle Sheba"s false step and its temporarily disastrous results, Owen Clancy sat brooding over his fire in his bachelor apartment. If his sitting-room did not suggest wealth, it certainly indicated refined and intellectual tastes and a fair degree of prosperity. A few fine pictures were on the walls, an unusually well-selected library, although a small one, was in a bookcase, while upon the table lay several of the best magazines and reviews of the period.
Above the mantel was suspended a cavalry sabre, its scabbard so dented as to suggest that it had seen much and severe service. Young Clancy"s eyes were fixed upon it, and his revery was so deep that a book fell from his hand to the floor without his notice. His thoughts, however, were dwelling upon a young girl. Strange that a deadly weapon should be allied to her in a.s.sociation. Yet so it was. He never could look upon that sabre which his father had used effectively throughout the Civil War, without thinking of Mara Wallingford. Neither this object nor any other was required to produce thoughts of her, for he pa.s.sed few waking hours in which she was not present to his fancy. He loved her sincerely, and felt that she knew it, and he also hoped that she concealed a deeper regard for him than she would admit even to herself. Indeed he almost believed that if he could share fully with her all the ideas and antipathies symbolized by the battered scabbard before him, his course of love would run smoothly. It was just at this point that the trouble between them arose. She was looking back; he, forward. He could not enter into her sad and bitter retrospection, feeling that this was morbid and worse than useless.
Remembering how cruelly she and her kindred had suffered, he made great allowances for her, and had often tried to soften the bitterness in her heart by reminding her that he, too, had lost kindred and property. By delicate efforts he had sought to show the futility of clinging to a dead past, and a cause lost beyond hope, but Mara would only become grave and silent when such matters were touched upon.
Clancy had been North repeatedly on business, and had never discovered a particle of hostility toward him or his section in the men with whom he dealt and a.s.sociated. They invited him to their homes; he met the women of their families, from whom he often received rather more than courtesy, for his fine appearance and a certain courtliness of manner, inherited from his aristocratic father, had won a thinly veiled admiration of which he had been agreeably conscious. Since these people had no controversy with him, how could he continue to cherish enmity and prejudice against them?
His warm Southern nature revolted at receiving hearty good-will and not returning it in kind. There was nothing of a "we-forgive-you" in the bearing of his Northern acquaintances, nor was there any effusiveness in cordiality with an evident design of rea.s.suring him. He was made to feel that he was guilty of an anachronism in brooding over the war, that it had been forgotten except as history, and that the present with its opportunities, and the future with its promise, were the themes of thought. The elements of life, energy, hopefulness with which he came in contact had appealed to him powerfully, for they were in harmony with his youth, ambition, yes, and his patriotism. "The South can never grow rich and strong by sulking," he had often a.s.sured himself, "and since the old dream is impossible, and we are to be one people, why shouldn"t we accept the fact and unite in mutual helpfulness?"
Reason, ambition, and policy prompted him to the divergence of view and action which was alienating Mara. "Imitation of her example and spirit would be political and financial suicide on our part," he broke out. "I love her; and if she loved in the same degree, I would be more to her than bitter memories. She would help me achieve a happy future for us both. As it is, I am so pulled in different ways that I"m half insane," and with contracted brow he sprang up and paced the floor.
But he could not hold to this mood long, and soon his face softened into an expression of anxiety and commiseration. Resuming his chair his thoughts ran on, "She isn"t happy either. For some cause I reckon she suffers more than I do. She looked pale to-day when I met her, and her face was full of anxiety until she saw me, and then it masked all feeling.
She has worn that same cloak now for three winters. Great Heaven! if she should be in want, and I not know it! Yet what could I do if she were? Why will she be so proud and obdurate? I believe that gaunt, white-haired aunt has more to do with her course than her own heart. Well, I can"t sit here and think about it any longer. If I see her something may become clearer, and I must see her before I go North again."
Mara Wallingford"s troubles and anxieties had indeed been culminating of late. Almost her sole inheritance had been sadness, trouble and enmity.
Not only had her unhappy mother"s history been kept fresh in her memory by her great-aunt, Mrs. Hunter, but the very blood that coursed in her veins and the soul that looked out from her dark, melancholy eyes had received from that mother characteristics which it is of the province of this story to reveal. To poor Mary Wallingford, the death of her father and of her husband had been the unspeakable tragedy and wrong which had destroyed her life; and the long agony of the mother had deprived her offspring of the natural and joyous impulses of childhood and youth. If Mara had been left to the care of a judicious guardian--one who had sought by all wholesome means to counteract inherited tendencies, a most cheerful and hopeful life would have been developed, but in this respect the girl had been most unfortunate. The mind grows by what it feeds upon, and Mrs. Hunter"s spirit had become so imbittered by dwelling upon her woes and losses that she was incapable of thinking or speaking of much else. She had never been a woman of warm, quick sympathies. She had seen little of the world, and, in a measure, was incapable of seeing it, whatever advantages she might have had. This would have been true of her, no matter where her lot had been cast, for she was a born conservative. What she had been brought up to believe would always be true; what she had been made familiar with by early custom would always be right, and anything different would be viewed with disapproval or intoleration. Too little allowance is often made for characters of this kind. We may regret rigidity and narrowness all we please, but there should be some respect for downright sincerity and the inability to see both sides of a question.
It often happens that if natures are narrow they are correspondingly intense; and this was true of Mrs. Hunter. She idolized her husband dead, more perhaps than if he had been living. Her brother and nephew were household martyrs, and little Mara had been taught to revere their memories as a devout Catholic pays homage to a patron saint. Between the widow and all that savored of the North, the author of her woes, there was a great gulf, and the changes wrought by the pa.s.sing years had made no impression, for she would not change. She simply shut her eyes and closed her ears to whatever was not in accord with her own implacable spirit. She grew cold toward those who yielded to the kindly influences of peace and the healing balm of time; she had bitter scorn for such as were led by their interests to fraternize with the North and Northern people. In her indiscrimination and prejudice they were all typified by the unscrupulous adventurers who had made a farce of government and legally robbed the South when prostrate and bleeding after the War. She and her niece had been taxed out of their home to sustain a rule they loathed. Not a few women in Boston, in like circ.u.mstances, would be equally bitter and equally incapable of taking the broad views of an historian.
The influence of such a concentrated mind warped almost to the point of monomania, upon a child like Mara, predisposed from birth to share in a similar spirit, can be readily estimated. Peace and time, moreover, had not brought the ameliorating tendencies of prosperity, but rather a continuous and hopeless pressure of poverty.
Mrs. Hunter had been incapable of doing more than save what she could out of the wreck of their fortunes. There were no near relations, and those remaining, with most of their friends and acquaintances who had not been alienated, were struggling like themselves in straitened circ.u.mstances.
Yet out of this poverty, many open, generous hands would have been stretched to the widow and her ward had they permitted their want to be known. But they felt that they would rather starve than do this, for they belonged to that cla.s.s which suffers in proud silence. Although they had practiced an economy that was so severe as to be detrimental to both health and character, their princ.i.p.al had melted away, and their jewelry and plate, with the exception of heirlooms that could not be sold without a sense of sacrilege, had been quietly disposed of. The end of their resources was near, and they knew not what to do. Mara had tried to eke out their means by fancy-work, but she had no great apt.i.tude for such tasks, and her education was too defective and old-fashioned for the equipment of a modern teacher. She was well read, especially in the cla.s.sics, yet during the troubled years of her brief life she had not been given the opportunity to acquire the solid, practical knowledge which would enable her to instruct others. The exclusiveness and seclusion, so congenial to her aunt, had been against her, and now reticence and a disposition to shrink from the world had become a characteristic of her own.
She felt, however, that her heart, if not her will, was weak toward Owen Clancy. In him had once centred the hope of her life, and from him she now feared a wound that could never heal.
She underrated his affection as he did hers. He felt that she should throw off the incubus of the past for his sake; she believed that any depth of love on his part should render impossible all intercourse with the North beyond what was strictly necessary for the transaction of business. In order to soften her prejudices, he had told her of his social experiences in New York, and, as a result, had seen her face hardened against him....
She had no words of bitter scorn such as her aunt had indulged in when learning of the fact. She had only thought in sorrow that since he was "capable of accepting hospitality from the people who had murdered her kindred and blighted the South, there was an impa.s.sable gulf between them."
Now, however, the imperative questions of bread and shelter were uppermost. She believed that Clancy could and would solve these questions at once if permitted, and it was characteristic of her pride and what she regarded as her loyalty, that she never once allowed herself to think of this alternative. Yet what could she and her aunt do? They were in the pathetic position of gentlewomen compelled to face the world with unskilled hands. This is bad enough at best, but far worse when hands are half paralyzed by pride and timidity as well as ignorance. The desperate truth, however, stared them in the face. Do something they must, and that speedily.
They were contemplating the future in a hopeless sort of dread and perplexity on the evening when Aunt Sheba and young Clancy"s thoughts were drawn toward them in such deep solicitude. This fact involves no mystery.
The warm-hearted colored woman had seen and heard little things which suggested the truth, and the sympathetic lover had seen the face of the young girl when she was off her guard. Its expression had haunted him, and impelled him to see her at once, although she had chilled his hopes of late.
When compelled to leave the old home, Mrs. Hunter had taken the second floor of a small brick house located on a side street. In spite of herself Mara"s heart fluttered wildly for a moment when the woman who occupied the first story brought up Clancy"s card.
"You can"t see him to-night," said her aunt, frowning.
Mara hesitated a moment, and then said firmly, "Yes, I will see him.
Please ask him to come up." When they were alone, she added in a low voice, "I shall see him once more, probably for the last time socially. We cannot know what changes are in store for us."
"Well, I won"t see him," said Mrs. Hunter, frigidly; and she left the room.
CHAPTER V
PAST AND FUTURE
Under the impulses of his solicitude and affection Clancy entered quickly, and took Mara"s hand in such a strong, warm grasp that the color would come into her pale face. In spite of her peculiarities and seeming coldness, she was a girl who could easily awaken a pa.s.sionate love in a warm, generous-hearted man like the one who looked into her eyes with something like entreaty in his own. She had a beauty peculiar to herself, and now a strange loveliness which touched his very soul. The quick flush upon her cheeks inspired hope, and a deep emotion, which she could not wholly suppress, found momentary expression. Even in that brief instant she was transfigured, for the woman within her was revealed. As if conscious of a weakness which seemed to her almost criminal, her face became rigid, and she said formally, "Please be seated, Mr. Clancy."
"You must not speak to me in that way and in that tone," he began impetuously, and then paused, for he was chilled by her cold, questioning gaze. Her will was so strong, and found such powerful expression in her dark, sad eyes, that for a moment he was dumb and embarra.s.sed. Then his own high spirit rallied, and a purpose grew strong that she should hear him, and hear the truth also. His gray eyes, that had wavered for a moment, grew steady in their encounter with hers.
Seating himself on the opposite side of the table, he said quietly, "You think I have no right to speak to you in such a way."