Читать книгу The Land is Bright - Jim Kjelgaard - Страница 6

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By mid-afternoon the next day, Colin disposed of his final case which involved a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound sailor who had allegedly stolen, of all things, a set of crochet hooks and a half-finished antimacassar to which they were attached. With an inward sigh of relief he went into his chambers, took off his judicial robe and sat down at his desk. Going through his mail, he found a note in his father's precise script.

Colin, I have news of the greatest importance and must see you some time today. Ralph Campbell II

Colin tucked the note into his pocket. His father was not in the habit of making mountains out of molehills. He would stop off to visit with him at Quail Wings this afternoon on his way to the Dare's.

Before leaving the courthouse, he checked to make sure that the tiny pasteboard box was in the pocket of his topcoat. The box contained a garnet brooch, a peace offering, by no means the first he had tendered in the last three months, to atone for his responsibility for yesterday's quarrel. It was his fault. He had admitted that last night. He had known Jeannie was to be there waiting for him. But when anything interested him, and the Stewarts did, he devoted himself to it so wholeheartedly that he forgot everything else. Jeannie knew that. Of course he had apologized. She had answered snappishly that he had no right to keep her waiting while he exchanged pleasantries with his hill-billy friends. Then she had made a remark which he interpreted to mean that it was Ann Stewart, rather than an interest in hunting, that had kept him so long in conversation. When he made an angry retort, she had promptly denied that she had ever even thought such a thing. The quarrel might have been shrugged off if there hadn't been so many disagreements lately.

Once more, Colin tried to reason it away. He had been working very hard lately; he had been very much preoccupied with the growing tension between North and South—doubtless he hadn't been the pleasantest of companions. His imagination often ran away with him and probably he had been too quick to give a double meaning to an innocuous remark. At any rate, he must try a little harder to please his fiancée.

He left the courthouse and strode towards the rig that awaited him, grinning suddenly at the sight of the middle-aged bay gelding standing patiently between the shafts of the trap. The sedate Dusty was not his notion of a proper horse. Still, he furnished a wholly proper means of transportation for the judge of Denbury Court.

As soon as they were out of Denbury on the River Road, Colin wrapped the reins around the whipstock and let Dusty set his own pace. Every morning that court was in session Dusty took him there and every night returned him to Quail Wings. He knew both his duty and the road and he could be trusted. Submerged in his own thoughts, Colin sat up straight and looked about him only when they came to Hilliard Thorne's Thornhill and the first view of the Alleghenies.

The sight calmed him, as it had calmed and comforted him for as long as he could remember. Plantations such as Thornhill and Quail Wings represented man's genius for accomplishment. But the power of God dwarfed human effort just as the most majestic temples raised to Him were puny compared with these cathedrals He had created. No man could look at them and lack faith.

Quail Wings, now visible in the foreground, was perfectly set off by a low ridge that prevented any view of the mountains. That was as it should be. The plantation and all it connoted had no kinship with the mountains and what they represented. Built well back from the river, with shining glazed windows and huge stone chimneys at either end, the house had an appearance of great age. Yet it was far from ancient. Colin's paternal grandfather, forced to leave the Tidewater because wasteful agriculture had ruined his plantation, had copied the house he left behind and modified it only as the more rugged western climate demanded. The house at Tidewater had, in turn, been a copy of the ancestral home in England. Nearing it, Colin felt the warmth that always flooded him at the sight of this beloved home.

Of his own accord, Dusty swung into the drive lined with poplars and broke into a phlegmatic trot as Colin leaped from the trap. Dusty would go on to the stables where one of the boys would take care of him. Admitted into the house by William, the doorman, Colin made his way down the hall to the study which in recent years had become a refuge for his father.

In his mid-seventies, Ralph Campbell looked with haughty disdain upon the effete younger generation. He could, he declared loudly and often, ride better, shoot straighter, dance longer and more gracefully, and drink more whiskey than either of his sons or, for that matter, anyone else's. There was no foundation whatever for the first three statements; the old man was short of breath, red of face, and almost apoplectic when excited. In addition, he was subject to fainting spells that were causing both Dr. McDermott and his family much concern. But there was no question whatever about the latter boast. These days, the elder Campbell was seldom without a glass in his hand and a bottle at his side. However, no amount of drinking ever left a noticeable effect. Colin knocked on the closed door and heard his father say, "Who is it?"

"Colin."

"Come in, boy."

Colin entered softly, partly out of respect for his father and partly because the room always impressed him. On three walls were book shelves filled with titles ranging from The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius in Latin to the latest treatises on crop and animal husbandry. The fourth wall was given solely to the portrait of Edith Campbell, and as always happened when he entered the study, Colin's eyes sought his dead mother's image.

That she had been lovely was obvious; no artist could have put such beauty down on canvas if it had not been present for him to capture. Her blond hair was piled high on her head with a stray ringlet, probably the artist's touch, curled demurely about her right ear. Her features were delicate, almost fragile, but with a marked inner strength. Her eyes were gentle, but they held depth and perception. This portrait and his father's rare references were all that Colin knew of his mother. She had died when he was a few months old from the after-effects of his birth.

Colin turned to face his father who, as usual, sat behind the desk. Ralph Campbell's face, though flushed and aged now, mirrored what he had been when young. His hair was iron-grey, but it had been very dark. He was bushy-browed, firm of jaw, proud, intelligent and stubborn. Colin noted the half-empty bottle and the partially filled glass on the desk, but, though he was sure that excess in both food and drink had a direct connection with his father's ill health, he said nothing. Nobody had ever made this proud old man do anything he didn't feel like doing and nobody was going to start now.

"I'm glad you're here, Colin." Ralph Campbell tapped a folded paper on the desk. "I've just had a letter from Macklyn. He has resigned his commission and is coming home with Betsie and the children before Christmas."

Colin was stunned. Macklyn, his senior by a dozen years, held a colonel's rank in the United States Army and had devoted himself to a military career as wholeheartedly as Colin had embraced the law. "Resigned! Why?" he said.

"As a loyal Southerner, he will not serve under the command of Abraham Lincoln," his father answered. Colin thought that Julius Caesar might have referred to some barbaric Gallic chieftain in the same contemptuous tone. "Why else?"

"I think he's being very foolish," Colin said firmly.

"Foolish?" the elder Campbell bristled. "Foolish, when these, these, scallywag Yankees are plotting in every evil way to humble the South and reduce her to servitude? Do you believe a Campbell should continue to serve an army that will be hurled against the South when those money-mad schemers think the time is ripe?"

"Be reasonable, Father. The South is not without its money-mad schemers, some of whom see secession as the perfect way to wiggle out of their debts up north."

Ralph Campbell ignored this remark. "The South has conceded all she can and retain honor. These blasted Yankees need to be taught their places."

Colin sighed. They had been over this same ground many times before, and Ralph Campbell had not yielded an inch. He would not yield now, and further argument would solve nothing. But Colin decided grimly that he wouldn't yield either. Despite the secession fever that was rampant in South Carolina and rising fast in other states, a few cool heads and a few decisions based on common sense might yet keep the Union together.

His father looked at him searchingly. "Well?"

"What do you expect me to say?"

"Where do you stand?"

"You know very well—not with secession and certainly not with war."

"But if war comes?"

"If war comes—I don't know," Colin said slowly. "I don't know."

Ralph Campbell sat in silence. Colin had never before admitted the possibility that his devotion to the Union, his belief that slavery should be abolished, his conviction that the South must eventually build its economy on free labor were stronger than his love for his family, his region, his state. The time for argument had ended.

"You think I am unreasonable," Ralph Campbell said quietly. "I think you are without feeling. If events continue as they have been going, there won't be room for both of us at Quail Wings."

Father and son gazed at each other across the desk. "You are asking me to take a stand on a situation that may never arise," Colin said finally. "I hope to God it doesn't."

The father gave way. "I hope not," he muttered, lowering his eyes.

Colin turned and left the room.

Colin was in no mood to patch up a lover's quarrel as he rode his favorite stallion, Robin, through the autumn twilight to Jeannie Dare's. His thoughts were on his father's words, "There won't be room for both of us at Quail Wings."

Whenever he had thought of his future with Jeannie—and he had thought of it less and less frequently in the three months since her return from school in Baltimore, he admitted—he had envisioned a life at Quail Wings. Now with Macklyn and his family coming home to stay, with two like-minded adversaries in the house, perhaps he needed a roof of his own.

But where? Quail Wings was his home and he loved it, but he had no particular love for Denbury and its society. He loved his work; he would not want to leave that, even though he realized that the problems it dealt with were only the petty differences of insignificant people. They did not touch on the affairs of the high and mighty—gentlemen did not take their differences to court. The lowly dared not approach it. No Negro had ever brought his troubles to Denbury Courthouse. The freeman did not expect justice in the South. The slave was not legally entitled to it. Although it reached only some of the people and then only their superficial problems, justice was worthy of any man's service.

The two things that bound him to Denbury were his work and Jeannie. Jeannie! As her image rose before his eyes, he realized that he was sure of nothing. Jeannie, too, had envisioned life with him at Quail Wings as mistress of the finest plantation for miles around. Colin felt suddenly and strongly that much of her feeling for him was bound up in this vision.

As Robin turned in at the driveway to Dare's Landing, Colin felt again for the little pasteboard box. He had thought of it as a peace offering, but in his present state of mind it seemed more a parting gift.

After giving Robin over to a stableboy, he hesitated a moment before climbing the front steps and lifting the brass knocker on the massive door.

"Is Miss Jeannie at home?" he asked the colored houseboy who answered to his knock.

"No, suh. Miss Jeannie gone callin'."

"Is Mr. Tom at home?"

"'Scuse me, suh."

He disappeared and returned a moment later. "Come in, suh." He escorted Colin down the hall to the study. Tom Dare, who had been working at his desk, rose with his hand extended when Colin came in. He was a man who would command a second glance in any crowd. His face was ugly and yet not unattractive. It was a misshapen face—misshapen in the manner of a bulldog's. His features were set, like a bulldog's, into a pugnacious expression. His eyes were ordinarily expressionless and seldom offered the slightest hint about his thoughts.

Almost forty years ago, with two hundred pounds in his money belt bequeathed by a thrifty merchant father, Tom Dare had sailed from England to make his fortune in America. He had landed in Richmond, but found little there to consume that restless, driving energy that was to dominate his whole life.

Scenting opportunity in the back lands, Tom discovered as soon as he arrived that his nose had not led him astray. These planters, whose fields produced more lavishly than the lands at Tidewater, had to transport their crops to Richmond before they could even hope to ship them. The cost was always high and sometimes prohibitive. Tom walked every inch of the Connicon, discovered the two reefs that prevented the more shallow-draft ocean going ships from ascending to a point well west of Denbury, and with the help of two slaves, he literally ripped them out with brute force. That was a bare beginning.

He bypassed Denbury—from the border it was still five hundred yards to the river—and chose a quiet harbor on the Connicon itself. He used every farthing of his own capital, and when that was exhausted he begged, borrowed, cajoled, and intimidated. He drove his slaves hard enough to rouse talk among the planters, but he drove himself harder. When his first small wharf and warehouse were finally finished, he persuaded the skipper of the Jeannie, a small and decrepit ship that seldom had a full load, to come up the Connicon. Then he announced to all his neighbors that he was ready to accept whatever they might bring him and that he would pay them at Tidewater prices after the cargo was sold.

His first clients were small and struggling planters who had always felt the strain of paying for transportation to port and then across the Atlantic. By sheer coincidence, both tobacco and cotton were in short supply that year and Tom's clients earned such fabulous profits than others flocked in. Because Tom's business acumen was outstanding, his clients continued to prosper and when he was financially able to do so, he expanded. Now, it was rumored, his wealth exceeded that of even the most affluent planters.

He said, "Jeannie's gone to see Laura Talmadge. She should return soon."

She had known he was coming, Colin thought, and he tried to mask his irritation. Tom saw through the mask.

"During my life, Colin, I've found the answer to a few riddles but woman is one riddle I've never understood."

Colin grinned. "I'll wait if I may."

"You are very welcome. Have you read the newspapers since the election? War seems nearer with every passing hour."

"You believe that, too, do you?" Colin asked.

"You mean you think there is some hope?"

"That depends on the new president."

"You don't expect anything but trouble from that gorilla," Tom Dare growled. "Have you read any of his speeches?"

"All that I have seen printed. He seems like an eminently sensible and reasonable fellow for a Republican."

"Sensible? Why, he talks like a raving lunatic with all this business of a nation not being able to exist half slave and half free. It's existed perfectly well up to now. Not, mind you, that I don't believe all this talk of secession isn't lunacy, too. But the states that are seething with propaganda will leave the Union sooner or later, I'm sure of that. There are too many fools in responsible positions, North and South. Some idiot will bring about an outright act of war and—" Tom Dare shrugged and moodily continued, "that will be a black day for the South. She may fight to the last man, but she cannot possibly win."

"Why?" Colin could not help feeling a little angry, although he held the same opinion.

Tom Dare laughed. "Don't take me wrong. Man for man, the Southerner is more than equal to the Northerner, though I question local opinion that he's five times as good. Even if he were, this will not be a war of men alone. It will take factories, money, railways, ships—and in these the North is way ahead of us. The South may fight for as long as two years with the resources at her command and those that ingenuity may create. But what will happen when everything's exhausted?"

"Much as I dislike to admit it, I agree with you," Colin sighed.

"What will you do when war comes?" Tom Dare asked suddenly.

Colin gave a harsh laugh. "That's the second time I've been asked that question today. I have no answer for it."

"I trust I'm interrupting nothing too momentous." Jeannie had come in so silently that neither man had heard. She stood in the open doorway, her cheeks rosy from the autumn wind. Colin felt a sudden return of the old warm feeling and he knew again, as he had known in the beginning, that she was one of the most completely beautiful women he had ever seen or ever would see. Her lips were parted in a half-smile, but her eyes were teasing. "I'm sorry to be late, Colin."

He said gallantly, "You are forgiven."

"My dashing knight! I'll be down as soon as I've tidied up a bit. Don't be completely tiresome, Father."

"I'll try not to, darling."

As Tom Dare droned on about a shipment sent to England, Colin's mind harked back to the day he had really become aware of Jeannie Dare.

Riding quietly a trail bordered by trees which led to a clearing beside the Connicon, Colin had heard the discord of an altercation. He halted his mount at the edge of the clearing and looked out upon thirteen white boys, all sons of tradesmen or artisans in Denbury, yelling at and dancing around a small and frightened colored boy whom Colin recognized as the son of Magador, Ellis Xavier's top field hand.

No harm was done and none would have been done. The white boys had merely found someone they could terrify and were taking fullest advantage of their sport. At Colin's sharp reprimand they stopped yelling, exchanged sheepish glances and departed towards Denbury. Then, "Bravo, St. George! The dragon is vanquished!"

Colin looked toward the edge of the clearing and saw a most beautiful girl. Whenever Betsie, Macklyn's wife, came home for a visit, she'd indulged in a great deal of matchmaking on Colin's behalf. Her taste was excellent and many of the girls were lovely, but not even the exquisite Jane Carleton, yearned after and dreamed of by every eligible young man for miles around, could compare with the girl who had somehow materialized in this lonely place. Tall, slender and delicately made, her hair was almost silver in its fairness. She looked somehow like a moonbeam who had ventured into broad daylight.

Then he realized who she was and gasped, "Jeannie Dare!"

She teased him, "I had no wish to frighten you, Colin."

"You—you've grown up!"

"I'm almost eighteen."

"I haven't seen you for—for—"

"For at least a year," she supplied. "Father decided to hide me away at Miss Darnley's in Baltimore."

"I must say hiding agrees with you," Colin said recklessly. "May I escort you home?"

All that summer he saw her often, as often as he possibly could. Until that time, so intent had he been on his work, so eager in those first years out of law school to learn all there was to know about the practical ways in which the law could solve the tangles people wove for themselves, that he had allowed no woman to disturb him seriously. That summer, for the first time he was powerless, helplessly drawn to this slim, silver-fair girl. He, who had hoarded his leisure for reading or riding, found himself present at every ball. At first he had pretended to himself that his attendance was mere sociability. But the pounding of his blood at the sight of Jeannie's face in a crowded room made a sham of his pretense. Jeannie, more experienced than he for all her youth, saw through it before he did. It was no surprise to her when one evening as they walked in the garden at Dare's Landing he took her in his arms and between feverish kisses murmured brokenly, "I love you, Jeannie darling—marry me—"

Before she returned to Baltimore for her final year at Miss Darnley's, they were engaged.

He hadn't expected to live through the time while she was gone, so impatient was he for her return. Now she had been home for three months. Her nearness was enchanting, but his helplessness in her presence was gone; and question lingered where none had ever been.

Had she changed? He didn't think so. She was as beautiful as ever, as charming—when she had her own way completely. He had been so busy, he thought ruefully, straightening out other people's problems, that he had neglected self-knowledge. He had been as blindly infatuated as any schoolboy. She was young; life still had much to teach her. Marriage would give depth and understanding to their relationship. And yet—

"And do you agree that when war comes, cotton will be a major factor?" Tom Dare concluded a lengthy discourse on the Southern economy.

Colin started. "I'm sorry. I'm afraid I didn't hear your question."

Tom grinned fleetingly. "It isn't important. Ah, here's Jeannie!"

She entered, radiant in a simple white gown. As both men rose, Tom said, "I've work in the store. You young people remain here if you wish."

When he had gone, Jeannie turned expectantly to Colin. In an instant, she was in his arms and he was lost, his lips on hers. He was in love, he told himself as Jeannie gently drew away, and nothing else mattered.

"Colin," she said, "Colin darling, let's stop quarreling. I know I've been silly, and you haven't been very nice either. Let's stop, both of us."

Colin smiled into her eyes and then bent to kiss her cheek. "I have something here," he said, drawing the little pasteboard box out of his pocket, "which I intended to convey the same message."

Jeannie opened the box as eagerly as a child. "Ooh, what a beauty! And how sweet of you!" She threw her arms around his neck to bestow a childish kiss of gratitude. But there was nothing childish or playful in Colin's response. Closer and closer he held her against himself, driven by a sudden agonizing longing. Neither could tell how long they had been locked in silent transport when Jeannie came to her senses and struggled free.

Breathless and disheveled, she faced him from a safe distance. "I would like you to kiss me like that every day, every hour of every day. But not until we are married."

"If we were—" Just now, at this moment, it seemed the answer to everything. "Jeannie, we've waited long enough."

Her eyes sparkled as they met his. "Do you really mean it?"

"I really mean it. It's just that—"

"Just what, darling?"

He was about to explain his differences with his father, the tension at Quail Wings, but he was afraid to break the spell. He heard himself say instead, "Macklyn and Betsie are coming home to stay. There won't be room for all of us at Quail Wings. I must find a house for you and me."

"Then do!" she exclaimed. "Any old house anywhere! It doesn't matter just so both of us are in it!"

When Colin left and stepped into the outside darkness, he carried with him the longing that had possessed him earlier. But as he made his way home on Robin it slowly ebbed away into the black night. The wave of ecstasy on which he had floated seemed of another age and time, with another person. He saw in imagination, as he had seen so many times in reality, a pouting and petulant Jeannie who was displeased with him. And the words, "Any old house anywhere! It doesn't matter just so both of us are in it!" seemed completely incompatible with that vision.