She sank into her chair again, pressing her black-bordered handkerchief to her dark eyes, which seemed to Gordon singularly dry, round, and glossy-suggestive of chestnuts, in fact. "So good of you to come," she repeated, "to the house of mourning! Very few people have any talent for woe, Mr. Gordon. These rooms have housed many guests, but not to weep with us. The stricken deer must weep alone."
She fell to hysterical sobbing, which her mother interrupted by a remonstrant "My dear, my dear!" A blond young man with a florid cheek and a laughing blue eye, who sat in an easy posture at the foot of the table, aided the diversion of interest. "Won"t you introduce me, Mrs. Keene?-or must I take the opportunity to tell Mr. Gordon that I am Dr. Rigdon, very much at his service."
"Mercy! yes, yes, indeed!" Mrs. Keene acceded as the two young men shook hands; then, evidently perturbed by her lack of ceremony, she exclaimed pettishly, "Where is Geraldine? She always sees to it that everybody knows everybody, and that everybody is served at a reception or a tea. I never have to think of such things if she is in the house."
The allusions seemed to Gordon a bit incongruous with the recent heavy affliction of the household. The accuracy with which the waves of red hair, of a rich tint that suggested chemicals, undulated about the brow of the widow, the art with which the mourning-gown brought out all the best points and subdued the defects of a somewhat clumsy figure, the suspicion of a cosmetic"s aid in a dark line, scarcely perceptible yet amply effective, under the prominent eyes, all contributed to the determination of a lady of forty-five years of age to look thirty.
"Geraldine is always late for breakfast, but surely she ought to be down by this time," Mrs. Brinn said, with as much acrimony as a mild old lady could well compa.s.s.
"Oh, Geraldine reads half the night," explained Mrs. Keene. "Such an injurious habit! Don"t you think so, Mr. Gordon?"
"Oh, she is all right," expostulated the young physician.
"Geraldine has a const.i.tution of iron, I know," Mrs. Keene admitted. "But, mercy!-to live in books, Mr. Gordon. Now, I always wanted to live in life,-in the world! I used to tell Mr. Keene"-even she stumbled a trifle in naming the so recent dead. "I used to tell him that he had buried the best years of my life down here in the swamp on the plantation."
"Pleasant for Mr. Keene," Gordon thought.
"I wanted to live in life," reiterated Mrs. Keene. "What is a glimpse of New Orleans or the White Sulphur Springs once in a great while!"
""This world is but a fleeting show,"" quoted Rigdon, with a palpable effort to laugh off the inappropriate subject.
"Oh, that is what people always tell the restricted, especially when they are themselves drinking the wine-cup to the bottom."
"And finding the lees bitter," said Rigdon.
The widow gave an off-hand gesture. "You learned that argument from Geraldine-he is nothing but an echo of Geraldine, Mr. Gordon-now, isn"t he, Mamma?" she appealed directly to Mrs. Brinn.
"He seems to have a great respect for Geraldine"s opinion," said Mrs. Brinn primly.
"If I may ask, who is this lady who seems to give the law to the community?" inquired Gordon, thinking it appropriate to show, and really beginning to feel, an interest in the personnel of the entourage. "Am I related to her, as well as to Mr. Keene?"
"No; Geraldine is one of the Norris family-intimate friends of ours, but not relatives. She often visits here, and in my affliction and loneliness I begged her to come and stay for several weeks."
Not to be related to the all-powerful Geraldine was something of a disappointment, for although Gordon had little sentiment or ideality in his mental and moral system, one of his few emotional susceptibilities lay in his family pride and clannish spirit. He felt for his own, and he was touched in his chief altruistic possibility in the appeal that had brought him hither. To his amazement, Mr. Keene, a second cousin whom he had seldom even seen, had named him executor of his will, without bond, and in a letter written in the last illness, reaching its destination indeed after the writer"s death, had besought that Gordon would be gracious enough to act, striking a crafty note in urging the ties of consanguinity.
But for this plea Gordon would have doubtless declined on the score of pressure of business of his own. There were no nearer relatives, however, and with a sense of obligation at war with a restive indisposition, Gordon had come in person to this remote region to offer the will for probate, and to take charge of the important papers and personal property of the deceased. A simple matter it would prove, he fancied. There was no great estate, and probably but few business complications.
"Going home, Dr. George?" his hostess asked as the young physician made his excuses for quitting the table before the conclusion of the meal.
"Dr. Rigdon is not staying in the house, then?" Gordon queried as the door closed upon him, addressing the remark to the old lady by way of politely including her in the conversation.
"No, he is a neighbor of ours-a close and constant friend to us." Mrs. Brinn spoke as with grateful appreciation.
Mrs. Keene took a different view. "He just hangs about here on Geraldine"s account," she said. "He happens to be here to-day because last night she took a notion that he must go all the way to Bogue Holauba to meet you, if the train should stop at the station above; but he was called off to attend a severe case of ptomaine poisoning."
"And did the man die?" Mrs. Brinn asked, with a sort of soft awe.
"Mercy! I declare I forgot to ask him if the man died or not," exclaimed Mrs. Keene. "But that was the reason that only a servant was sent to meet you, Mr. Gordon. The doctor looked in this morning to learn if you had arrived safely, and we made him stay to breakfast with us."
Gordon was regretting that he had let him depart so suddenly.
"I thought perhaps, as he seems so familiar with the place he might show me where Mr. Keene kept his papers. I ought to have them in hand at once." Mrs. Keene remembered to press her handkerchief to her eyes, and Gordon hastily added, "Since Dr. Rigdon is gone, perhaps this lady-what is her name?-Geraldine-could save you the trouble."
"Mercy, yes!" she declared emphatically. "For I really do not know where to begin to look. Geraldine will know or guess. I"ll go straight and rouse Geraldine out of bed."
She preceded Gordon into the hall, and, flinging over her shoulder the admonition, "Make yourself at home, I beg," ran lightly up the stairs.
Meantime Gordon strolled to the broad front door that stood open from morning to night, winter and summer, and paused there to light his cigar. All his characteristics were accented in the l.u.s.tre of the vivid day, albeit for the most part they were of a null, negative tendency, for he had an inexpressive, impersonal manner and a sort of aloof, reserved dignity. His outward aspect seemed rather the affair of his up-to-date metropolitan tailor and barber than any exponent of his character and mind. He was not much beyond thirty years of age, and his straight, fine, dark hair was worn at the temples more by the fluctuations of stocks than the ravages of time. He was pale, of medium height, and slight of build; he listened with a grave, deliberate attention and an inscrutable gray eye, very steady, coolly observant, an appreciable a.s.set in the brokerage business. He was all unaccustomed to the waste of time, and it was with no slight degree of impatience that he looked about him.
The magnolia grove filled the s.p.a.ce to the half-seen gate in front of the house, but away on either side were long vistas. To the right the river was visible, and, being one of the great bends of the stream, it seemed to run directly to the west, the prospect only limited by the horizon line. On the other side, a glare, dazzlingly white in the sun, proclaimed the cotton-fields. Afar the gin-house showed, with its smoke-stack, like an obeliscal column, from which issued heavy coils of vapor, and occasionally came the raucous grating of a screw, telling that the baler was at work. Interspersed throughout the fields were the busy cotton-pickers, and now and again rose s.n.a.t.c.hes of song as they heaped the great baskets in the turn-rows.
Within the purlieus of the inclosure about the mansion there was no stir of industry, no sign of life, save indeed an old hound lying on the veranda steps, looking up with great, liquid, sherry-tinted eyes at the stranger, and, though wheezing a wish to lick his hand, unable to muster the energy to rise.
After an interval of a few moments Gordon turned within. He felt that he must forthwith get at the papers and set this little matter in order. He paused baffled at the door of the parlor, where satin damask and rosewood furniture, lace curtains and drawn shades, held out no promise of repositories of business papers. On the opposite side of the hall was a sitting-room that bore evidence of constant use. Here was a desk of the old-fashioned kind, with a bookcase as a superstructure, and a writing-table stood in the centre of the floor, equipped with a number of drawers which were all locked, as a tentative touch soon told. He had not concluded its examination when a step and rustle behind him betokened a sudden entrance.
"Miss Geraldine Norris!" a voice broke upon the air,-a voice that he had not before heard, and he turned abruptly to greet the lady as she formally introduced herself.
A veritable t.i.tania she seemed as she swayed in the doorway. She was a little thing, delicately built, slender yet not thin, with l.u.s.trous golden hair, large, well-opened, dark blue eyes, a complexion daintily white and roseate,-a fairy-like presence indeed, but with a prosaic, matter-of-fact manner and a dogmatic pose of laying down the law.
Gordon could never have imagined himself so disconcerted as when she advanced upon him with the caustic query, "Why did you not ask Mrs. Keene for her husband"s keys? Surely that is simple enough!" She flung a bunch of keys on a steel ring down upon the table. "Heavens! to be roused from my well-earned slumbers at day-break to solve this problem! "Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!"" She mimicked Mrs. Keene"s urgency, then broke out laughing.
"Now," she demanded, all unaffected by his mien of surprised and offended dignity, "do you think yourself equal to the task of fitting these keys,-or shall I lend you my strong right arm?"
It is to be doubted if Gordon had ever experienced such open ridicule as when she came smiling up to the table, drawing back the sleeve of her gown from her delicate dimpled wrist. She wore a white dress, such as one never sees save in that Southern country, so softly sheer, falling in such graceful, floating lines, with a deep, plain hem and no touch of garniture save, perhaps, an edge of old lace on the surplice neck. The cut of the dress showed a triangular section of her soft white chest and all the firm modelling of her throat and chin. It was evidently not a new gown, for a rent in one of the sleeves had been sewed up somewhat too obviously, and there was a darn on the shoulder where a rose-bush had snagged the fabric. A belt of black velvet, with long, floating sash-ends, was about her waist, and a band of black velvet held in place her shining hair.
"I am sorry to have been the occasion of disturbing you," he said with stiff formality, "and I am very much obliged, certainly," he added, as he took up the keys.
"I may consider myself dismissed from the presence?" she asked saucily. "Then, I will permit myself a cup of chocolate and a roll, and be ready for any further commands."
She frisked out of the door, and, frowning heavily, he sat down to the table and opened the top-drawer, which yielded instantly to the first key that he selected.
The first paper, too, on which he laid his hand was the will, signed and witnessed, regularly executed, all its provisions seeming, as he glanced through it, reasonable and feasible. As he laid it aside, he experienced the business man"s satisfaction with a doc.u.ment duly capable of the ends desired. Then he opened with a sudden flicker of curiosity a bulky envelope placed with the will and addressed to himself. He read it through, the natural interest on his face succeeded by amazement, increasing gradually to fear, the chill drops starting from every pore. He had grown ghastly white before he had concluded the perusal, and for a long time he sat as motionless as if turned to stone.
The September day glowed outside in sumptuous splendor. A glad wind sprang up and sped afield. Geraldine, her breakfast finished, a broad hat canted down over her eyes, rushed through the hall as noisily as a boy, prodded up the old hound, and ran him a race around the semicircle of the drive. A trained hound he had been in his youth, and he was wont to conceal and deny certain ancient accomplishments. But even he realized that it was waste of breath to say nay to the persistent Geraldine. He resigned himself to go through all his repertoire,-was a dead dog, begged, leaped a stick back and forth, went lame, and in his newly awakened interest performed several tricks of which she had been unaware. Her joyful cries of commendation-"Played an encore! an encore! He did, he did! Cutest old dog in the United States!" caught Mrs. Keene"s attention.
"Geraldine," she screamed from an upper window, "come in out of the sun! You will have a sun-stroke-and ruin your complexion besides! You know you ought to be helping that man with those papers,-he won"t be able to do anything without you!" Her voice quavered on the last words, as if she suddenly realized "that man" might overhear her,-as indeed he did. But he made no sign. He sat still, stultified and stony, silently gazing at the paper in his hands.
When luncheon was announced, Gordon asked to have something light sent in to him, as he wished not to be disturbed in his investigation of the doc.u.ments. He had scant need to apprehend interruption, however, while the long afternoon wore gradually away. The universal Southern siesta was on, and the somnolent mansion was like the castle of Sleeping Beauty. The ladies had sought their apartments and the downy couches; the cook, on a shady bench under the trellis, nodded as she seeded the raisins for the frozen pudding of the six-o"clock dinner; the waiter had succ.u.mbed in clearing the lunch-table and made mesmeric pa.s.ses with the dish-rag in a fantasy of washing the plates; the stable-boy slumbered in the hay, high in the loft, while the fat old coachman, with a chamois-skin in his hand, dozed as he sat on the step of the surrey, between the fenders; the old dog snored on the veranda floor, and Mrs. Keene"s special attendant, who was really more a seamstress than a ladies" maid, dreamed that for some mysterious reason she could not thread a needle to fashion in a vast hurry the second mourning of her employer, who she imagined would call for it within a week!
Outside the charmed precincts of this Castle Indolence, the busy cotton-pickers knew no pause nor stay. The steam-engine at the gin panted throughout all the long hot hours, the baler squealed and rasped and groaned, as it bound up the product into marketable compa.s.s, but there was no one waking near enough to note how the guest of the mansion was pacing the floor in a stress of nervous excitement, and to comment on the fact.
Toward sunset, a sudden commotion roused the slumbrous place. There had been an accident at the gin,-a boy had been caught in the machinery and variously mangled. Dr. George Rigdon had been called and had promptly sewed up the wounds. A runner had been sent to the mansion for bandages, brandy, fresh clothing, and sundry other collateral necessities of the surgery, and the news had thrown the house into unwonted excitement.
"The boy won"t die, then?" Geraldine asked of a second messenger, as he stood by the steps of the veranda, waiting for the desired commodities.
"Lawdy,-no, ma"am! He is as good as new! Doc" George, he fix him up."
Gordon, whom the tumult had summoned forth from his absorptions, noted Geraldine"s triumphant laugh as she received this report, the toss of her spirited little head, the light in her dark blue eyes, deepening to sapphire richness, her obvious pride in the skill, the humanitarian achievement, of her lover. Dr. George must be due here this evening, he fancied. For she was all freshly bedight; her gown was embellished with delicate laces, and its faint green hue gave her the aspect of some water-sprite, posed against that broad expanse of the Mississippi River, that was itself of a jade tint reflected from a green and amber sky; at the low horizon line the vermilion sun was sinking into its swirling depths.