Читать книгу Sun in Their Eyes - Monte Barrett - Страница 7

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Colonel Winthrop Sargent read Jonathan’s letter deliberately. The crisp autumn years were kind to the old gentleman. He clung to the fashions of younger times. His hair was powdered, lace edged his cuffs, and silver buckles glinted in the morning sun.

“I remember your father well,” he said. His fingers drummed the chair arm as he gazed reflectively into space. “We met at Saratoga under the most favorable of conditions, for that was a turning point as far as we were concerned. We’d been retreating ever since Ticonderoga and it had been a sorry business. That day we gave the Redcoats a taste of their own medicine.”

They were seated in the library at Gloucester.

“And so you’ve come to have a look at Natchez.” The colonel wrenched his thoughts from the past. “Good! We need young men of your background. This is new country and the opportunities are almost unlimited. If I can be of any service, particularly in the selection of land, don’t hesitate to call upon me. Of course we shall expect you to be our guest here until such time as you are permanently settled.” Hospitably he brushed aside the young man’s protest. “I’ll send the coach to pick up your things.”

The mistress of Gloucester was equally gracious. “After all ’twill be more convenient to have you lodged here,” she assured him, a twinkle in her eye. “Your father has asked us to keep a friendly eye upon you and the Kentucky Tavern is too far away for that. We’ll put you up in the garçonnière where you may go and come as you please and we may still have the pleasure of your company.”

And so it had been arranged. Jonathan, who never before had heard of a garçonnière, discovered that it was a separate building adjacent to the manor and a distinctive feature of many estates in this section. It was a residence for the older sons of a family where they enjoyed the freedom of a separate establishment while still living at home. Here it was a comfortable structure whose several rooms had been occupied by sons now absent. It stood in a line with the main house some thirty yards distant. Directly behind it was another brick structure known as the “summer kitchen,” where house servants were quartered. Here Gabe was housed.

Gloucester was an interesting establishment. It was built in the same tradition as the manor houses of the Piedmont in Virginia, with an English basement on the ground floor and classic columns across its front. Colonel Sargent had bought it some years after his term as territorial governor and had enlarged it considerably with the result that its interior arrangement varied from the usual pattern. Instead of the customary center hall it had two graceful entrances, each opening into a separate stair hall. These were connected by a third hall, behind which was the library. The drawing room was at one end of the house, the dining room at the other. Both had gracious proportions. The ingenuity with which the conveniences had been contrived in frontier construction fascinated Jonathan. The laundry in the basement had an open cistern in its center from which the slaves dipped their water. A dumb-waiter connected the spacious dining hall with the winter kitchen below. The colonel took particular pride in showing Jonathan the stairway in the “new” hall, a replica of one in his family home in Massachusetts. He had brought workmen from Gloucester to build it.

This was not the only establishment where living was of noble proportions. In company with Colonel Sargent, Jonathan visited a number where the pattern, while not always on the same scale, was similar. In the more remote sections the young Virginian also visited estates which were in the toilsome process of building, where the heavy timber was being felled and fields readied for crops. It gave him an interesting insight into the background of the plantations. They were as much a product of labor and sweat as were the humbler clearings he had passed at intervals up the Trace. Here, however, there was a vision and a tradition behind the men who toiled which had a different flowering. Of course the richness of this land made it possible.

It was an atmosphere Jonathan understood and liked. This, he thought, was the country for him. The crops stood deep in fertility where the new fields were planted. On the virgin land magnificent trees everywhere attested the same good abundance of the soil. The massive live oaks were objects of special curiosity. The wide-spreading arms of these gnarled veterans often touched the ground for a hundred feet around the time-twisted trunks. There were a variety of other hardwoods but these were the monarchs. Here, too, he met the dripping Spanish moss, gay festoons, swinging silver in the breeze. Dogwood was snowy in the glades, adding its fragrance to air already rich with scents of earth’s fecundity.

Jonathan stopped his horse at the crest of a gently mounded hill. “Yes,” he thought, “this is the land I came to find.”

It was during his second breakfast at Gloucester that Mrs. Sargent told him of the invitation to the ball at Concord. Don Stephen Minor was entertaining for his distinguished Spanish guests. Jonathan’s face fell. Memory of his rebuff was poignantly fresh in his mind. He had sought in many ways to explain it without success. Teresa’s loveliness haunted him. The sound of her laughter, the soft touch of her hand, the redness of her lips were memories which persisted in spite of his resentment. He had tried to hope there had been some error, but there could be no mistaking the finality of her message. “I am to tell you she is not at home any time the señor calls.” With bitterness he remembered her exquisite coloring, the golden hair, the amber eyes, the tawny skin. “La del Pelo de Oro,” he thought harshly. “The Golden One. Well, she’s properly named. She’s just as hard as metal too.” He tried to convince himself, but it wasn’t easy to do. Try as he would, he could not shut her picture from his mind.

His hesitation at mention of the ball did not escape the colonel’s observation.

“Perhaps Mr. Kirk has another interest,” he chuckled. “There’s many a pretty face in Natchez. I’d lose my heart a dozen times a day had it not been captured so securely by you, my dear.”

“La.” Mrs. Sargent glanced at him with mock severity. “It probably isn’t your wife that stops you, sir; it’s your years.” She turned to Jonathan, smiling. “If it is a question of a young lady,” she said, “that will present no difficulties. It will be a large ball and she’s probably already invited. If she isn’t, I can arrange it for you. Her name shall be included on the guest list.”

In spite of his determination to put Teresa from his thoughts, the prospect of seeing her again was tempting. It irritated him that he should so thirst for the sight of her. Once he had ridden past Concord, tantalized by the hope of seeing her. He had been angered at his own weakness, but in his present state of mind he was like a parched traveler staring upon a mirage, realizing it was born of his despair but unable to tear his eyes away.

He had learned much of the establishment where she was stopping. That had not been hard to do. Both the house and its occupants were colorful. Its mistress, Don Stephen Minor’s wife, the Yellow Duchess, was an almost fabulous creature about whom legends clustered.

That same day he saw Teresa. She was with the Yellow Duchess. The yellow coach caught his eye, halted before the door of Joseph Murray’s shop on Main Street. It wasn’t the great lady’s custom to enter a store. Mr. Murray, standing bareheaded at the curb, was displaying a bolt of cloth for her imperious inspection. A small group of idlers dawdled in the spring sun to watch the spectacle from a respectful distance. In spite of his efforts to convince himself of indifference, Jonathan felt a twinge of envy when he saw two young men at the opposite door of the coach. A yellow-liveried groom held their horses. He slowed his gait, not wishing to pass the party but still less disposed to change his course on her account.

Teresa, for her part, had observed Jonathan. The young men standing by her side blinked at the spontaneity of her laughter and wondered fleetingly how they had managed to say things so witty. They couldn’t for the life of them remember what they had said but her gay spirit was giddily infectious. They didn’t realize that the laugh had been intended for the ears of a redheaded young Virginian. Teresa was provoked with Jonathan. She had fully expected to find him on her doorstep the first morning in Natchez, and had thought of whimsies which might prolong his suspense. She was not accustomed to neglect and was unaware of the sharp message which had rebuffed his effort to see her. Consequently she was determined upon a course of coolness. The two young men who squired her she found dull, but now she was grateful for their presence and quickened her gaiety.

Jonathan was so engrossed in the scene that he did not notice Cecily Marsten until she was right in front of him. She registered first only as a familiar figure which offered him a way out of his dilemma. He lifted his hat and bowed with a swift smile of recognition before he realized that this was the outspoken girl who had asked him never to bother her again.

Cecily Marsten had marked his approach with misgiving. Her step had slowed. She had decided to apologize for her sharpness at their first meeting and was wrestling with her pride. She did not know how to begin until his bow paved the way for her unpleasant chore.

“I did you an injustice the other day and I’m sorry.” She tumbled the words out swiftly. “Later I realized that you had only been trying to help my father. My first thought was—” she hesitated—“something else.”

Her penitence, so foreign to his memory of her, took Jonathan by surprise. When he had thought of her at all he remembered the sharpness of her tongue and the independence of her spirit. It was this direct quality he liked in her, he discovered now. The guileless candor which admitted a fault as readily as it had been quick with blunt censure pleased him and matched his mood. At least you knew where you stood with such a girl, he reflected, his thoughts slanting acidly off to Teresa. The knowledge that the girl in the yellow coach might be watching made him display his most cordial manner to Cecily.

“Please think nothing of it,” he urged.

“When you returned the money belt,” Cecily explained, “I realized how wrong I had been.”

The laughter from the coach had stopped now and Jonathan stifled the impulse to make sure that the amber eyes were watching him. He hoped so. He wanted them to see that there were other girls who welcomed his company. As he fell into step beside Cecily he surveyed her critically, liking what he saw. Of course she lacked Teresa’s beauty and she had the tongue of a little shrew when vexed, but he liked the directness of her blue gaze. Her wide mouth was friendly and, he thought, the brown curls softened her face until she was almost pretty in spite of the freckles on her nose.

His confusion at the encounter with Teresa was ended and its easy solution suggested a new course of action. If he could appear at the Concord ball with another girl on his arm he would show Teresa his indifference. The only other girl he knew was the one beside him. He recalled Mrs. Sargent’s assurance that she would procure an invitation for any girl in whom he might be interested. Why not?

“Our introduction the other evening was rather vague,” he said. “I know you are Miss Marsten and I am Jonathan Kirk. Are you planning to attend the ball at Concord tomorrow night?”

The girl’s mouth, a trifle too wide for beauty, gave her smile a boyish quality. “No, we are strangers here just passing through,” she explained.

“Oh, I had the impression you lived here.” He hesitated only momentarily. “Wouldn’t you like to go?”

She looked at him in surprise. The humiliation of their first meeting was very real in her mind and in her scrutiny there was something of a challenge. “I’m afraid I don’t share your acquaintance with the hostess at Concord,” she replied, and then forced herself to add, “and I’m afraid our introduction wasn’t exactly of a social nature.”

“You will receive the invitation,” Jonathan promised eagerly. Now that he had decided upon a plan he was determined to see it through. “It will be delivered today.”

He was interrupted by a hearty thump on the back. Johnny Durst wore a smile on his brown face.

“Jonty,” he cried in happy recognition. “I see you already know Cissy Marsten. You do get around, don’t you?”

So Johnny knew this girl. Jonathan enlisted his aid.

“She was just objecting that our first meeting wasn’t sufficiently formal,” he explained. “Help me out, Johnny.”

Durst’s expression was quizzical but he complied with grace. “Miss Cecily Marsten, may I have the honor of presenting Mr. Jonathan Kirk of Virginia, better known as Jonty? I don’t know how he does it but he always manages to scrape up an acquaintance with the most attractive girls. The last time it was a beautiful Spanish blonde and this time it’s you.”

Jonathan was quick to press the advantage of Durst’s friendship. “Is that introduction sufficiently formal, Miss Marsten?” he queried. “Or must I find someone else to recommend me? I’m still determined that you shall be my partner at the ball.”

Still Cecily hesitated. A ball was alluring after months of loneliness but there were other considerations which she was reluctant to admit, even to herself. Jonathan Kirk, his buff broadcloth cut in the latest fashion, was so obviously of the quality. Her sensitive pride was more aware of their difference in station now because it had not always been so. This was in her mind when she replied, “You may walk home with me if you like.” Her smile was reserved and her eyes did not share in it. “You’ll have to know where to send the invitation. If you haven’t changed your mind by then, I’d enjoy going to the ball.”

The remark had no meaning for Jonathan at the time. It was gay spring in a strange place, and the three of them enjoyed the walk down the long hill into the lower town. There was a curious blending of peoples in Natchez Under the Hill. Behind they left a sedate town where prim brick houses marched in rows and on its fringe manor houses crowded back the forest. Down along the river was a different world, a river port, bustling while the town above drowsed. The two worlds rubbed shoulders here. Shiny coaches from the upper level jostled through narrow streets where rivermen, loggers and frontiersmen in fringed leather shirts mingled. There was more homespun here than fine linen, once the Kentucky Tavern was passed. There was evidence, too, of another life whose dawn came at evening by yellow candlelight: gamblers whose white faces seldom saw the sun and women who laughed too readily, clad in silks not cut in a fashion seen above the hill.

Jonathan never thought to wonder about their destination until the meanest of the lodgings had been passed. Ahead lay only the river. Johnny Durst was unperturbed; he seemed to be on familiar ground. They were almost at water’s level now. The yellow Mississippi eddied about the rafts and flatboats moored along its shores. They were of every type. Logs crudely lashed together jostled solidly built arks, some of them boasting cabins.

They came to a halt at one of these, where a rough plank spanned the river’s muddy shore, and were greeted by a boy in his teens who smilingly hailed them from its deck. “Hi, Johnny.”

“Hello, Cris!”

“This is my brother Crispin.” Cecily turned speculative eyes upon Jonathan as she made the introduction. “You’ve met my father,” she added as the old gentleman appeared in the doorway of the cabin.

“Yes, indeed.” Jonathan tried to make his voice sound casual. Secretly he was dismayed. His invitation had resulted from a sudden impulse. Now it occurred to him that a girl clad in the poor finery that these humble resources offered would scarcely excite Teresa’s concern. But much more disquieting than this was his uneasiness over the false position in which he had placed Cecily Marsten. He pictured her in some simple frock, abashed amid the luxury of Concord, aware of the adverse contrast and humiliated by it. He had a feeling of savage impatience with himself. It was his own impulsiveness which had trapped them both. He recalled Cecily’s hesitation when he invited her and how she had qualified her acceptance until he had accompanied her home. With quick perception he recognized the reason for this, the sensitive pride which had prompted her course, and hoped fervently that she might not be hurt by any action of his. Her eyes were on him now. She was waiting, he knew.

His smile was quick. His only irritation was directed at himself and his only thought one of consideration for her. “I’ll deliver that invitation this afternoon in person,” he promised and was glad that he said it as he watched her eyes brighten.

On the flatboat, the cabin which had been home to the Marstens for weeks was a scene of considerable excitement. It was a surprisingly comfortable room, dominated by two pieces of furniture to which Cissy had clung—a large chest whose drawers now stood open in confusion and a table with fluted Sheraton legs. They were relics of easier days, which she had insisted on carrying to the new frontier. Sometimes it was hard for her to recall the picture of her father as he had been in those happier times, when his eyes were clear and his eloquence had been reserved for the courtroom. She had watched the image blur, witnessed its slow distortion. Now the likeness had been out of focus for so long, its past aspect had grown elusive; it was the present sorry outline that had become familiar.

Fuddled loquacity and careless dress had first betrayed the gradual decay. In the beginning—after her mother’s death—she had ascribed it to his grief, which she could understand so well because she shared it. But this became more difficult as his disintegration progressed. Even the once comfortable house grew bleak, stripped of its pleasant possessions.

She had been bewildered by his steady decay but her endurance had not faltered. Then, passing the tavern one day, she had heard the jeers which greeted her father’s maudlin oratory. Derision was a cruelty against which she had no defense. Her humiliation had remained bearable only as long as she could hug it to her in secrecy. When this was no longer possible, the wound to her pride was intolerable.

There had been a time when her anger against her father had been flaming and swift. That had passed. She regarded him now with the tolerant compassion one tenders to the ill, realizing his frailty, understanding some of its helplessness. In his sober moments Ben Marsten was pitifully eager to pledge amends for the future. But the promises wilted before the first temptation; the stamina to support them had long since been sapped.

Cecily Marsten was only twenty. Her desperate blue eyes had searched the Tennessee horizon hopelessly. With the unconsciously cruel laughter of the village tavern haunting her memory, she avoided the town. Then had been born the determination to seek a frontier where, cut off from the past, they might start again. She clung to a small hope that her father in new surroundings might somehow find his courage. Her faith in this was faint, but added to it was the resolution that there should be an opportunity for her younger brother Cris, only sixteen, and for herself too, in a fresh scene. The house and most of the remaining possessions had netted a small hoard of gold from which the houseboat had been built. Only the chest and the table had been saved.

It had been an unexpectedly happy journey. Cut off from his old surroundings, always under the vigilant eye of one or the other of his children, Ben Marsten had remained sober. There had even been kindly times in the dusk of evening when he had seemed to recapture something of the man he once had been. As the slow voyage stretched into weeks, hope had kindled bright in Cissy’s heart. That was before they reached Natchez, and her father, eluding Cris’s vigilance, had wandered into town alone. She had found him later, with Jonathan, after hours of anxious search.

It had been a long time since Cissy had attended a dance. In a chest drawer she found her mother’s wedding dress, a filmy thing of white muslin with short sleeves and cut low at the neck. With it were wrapped the slippers of white satin brocade, the ones with the tiny heels which always had fascinated her as a child. They were the first she had ever seen then. The slippers had yellowed to a rich cream that had not marred their beauty. The dress was rumpled but an iron would soon fix that. Cissy hummed a little tune under her breath as she held it up for inspection.