Читать книгу Mam' Linda - Will N. Harben - Страница 10

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HE wide avenue which ran north and south and cut the town of Darley into halves held the best and oldest residences. One side of the street caught the full rays of the morning sun and the other the slanting red beams of the afternoon. For so small a town, it was a well-graded and well-kept thoroughfare. Strips of grass lay like ribbons between the sidewalks and the roadway, and at the triangular spaces created by the intersection of certain streets there were rusty iron fences built primarily to protect diminutive fountains which had long since ceased to play. In one of these little parks, in the heart of the town, as it was in the hearts of the inhabitants, stood a monument erected to “The Confederate Dead,” a well-modelled, life-size figure of a Southern private wrought in stone in faraway Italy. Had it been correctly placed on its pedestal?—that was the question anxiously asked by reverent passers-by, for the cloaked and knapsacked figure, which time was turning gray, stood with its back to the enemy's country.

“Yes, it is right,” some would say, “for the soldier is represented as being on night picket-duty in Northern territory, and his thoughts and eyes are with his dear ones at home and the country he is defending.”

Henry Dwight, the wealthy sire of the aggressive young man with whom the foregoing chapters have principally dealt, lived in one of the moss and ivy grown houses on the eastern side of the avenue. It was a red brick structure two and a half stories high, with a colonial veranda, and had a square, white-windowed cupola as the apex of the slanting roof. There was a semicircular drive, which entered the grounds at one corner in the front and swept gracefully past the door. The central and smaller front gate, for the use of pedestrians, with its imitation stone posts, spanned by a white crescent, was reached from the house by a gravelled walk bordered by boxwood. On the right and left were rustic summerhouses, grape arbors and parterres containing roses and other flowers, all of which were well cared for by an old colored gardener.

Henry Dwight was a grain and cotton merchant, money-lender, and the president and chief stockholder of the Darley Cotton Mills, whose great brick buildings and cottages for employés stood a mile or so to the west of the town. This morning, having written his daily letters, he was strolling in his grounds smoking a cigar. To any one who knew him well it would have been plain that his mind was disturbed.

Adjoining the Dwight homestead there was another ancestral house equally as spacious and stand-. ing in quite as extensive, if more neglected, grounds. It was here that Major Warren lived, and it happened that he, too, was on his lawn just beyond the ramshackle intervening fence, the gate of which had fallen from its hinges and been taken away.

The Major was a short, slight old gentleman, quite a contrast to the John Bull type of his lusty, side-whiskered neighbor. He wore a dingy brown wig, and as he pottered about, raising a rose from the earth with his gold-headed ebony stick, or stooped to uproot an encroaching weed, his furtive glance was often levelled on old Dwight.

“I declare I really might as well,” he muttered, undecidedly. “What's the use making up your mind to a thing and letting it go for no sensible reason. He's taking a wrong view of it. I can tell that by the way he puffs at his cigar. Yes, I'll do it.”

The Major passed through the gateway and slowly drew near his preoccupied neighbor.

“Good-morning, Henry,” he said, as Dwight looked up. “If I'm any judge of your twists and turns, you are not yet in a thoroughly good-humor.”

“Good-humor? No, sir, I'm not in a good-humor. How could I be when that young scamp, the only heir to my name and effects—”

Dwight's spleen rose and choked out his words, and, red in the face, he stood panting, unable to go further.

“Well, it seems to me, while he's not my son,” the Major began, “that you are—are—well, rather overbearing—I might say unforgiving. He's been sowing wild oats, but, really, if I am any judge of young men, he is on a fair road to—to genuine manhood.”

“Road to nothing,” spluttered Dwight. “I gave him that big farm to see what he could do in its management. Never expected him to work a lick—just wanted to see if he could keep it on a paying basis, but it was an investment of dead capital. Then he took up the law. He did a little better at that along with Bill Garner to lean on, but that never amounted to anything worth mentioning. Then he went into politics.”

“And I heard you say yourself, Henry,” the Major ventured, gently, “that you believed he was actually cut out for a future statesman.”

“Yes, and like the fool that I was I hoped for it. I was so glad to see him really interested in politics that I laid awake at night thinking of his success. I heard of his popularity on every hand. Men came to me, and women, too, telling me they loved him and were going to work for him against that jack-leg lawyer Wiggin, and put him into office with a majority that would ring all over the State; and they meant it, I reckon. But what did he do? In his stubborn, bull-headed way he abused those mountain men who took the law into their hands for the public good, and turned hundreds of them against him; and all for a nigger—a lazy, trifling nigger boy!”

“Well, you see,” Major Warren began, lamely, “Carson and I saw Pete the night he was whipped so severely and we took pity on him. They played together when they were boys, as boys all over the South do, you know, and then he saw Mam' Linda break down over it and saw old Lewis crying for the first time in the old man's life. I was mad, Henry, myself, and you would have been if you had been there. I could have fought the men who did it, so I understand how Carson felt, and when he made the remark Wiggin is using to such deadly injury to his prospects my heart warmed to the boy. If he doesn't succeed as a politician it will be because he is too genuine for a tricky career of that sort. His friends are trying to get him to make some statement that will reinstate him with the mountain people who sympathized with the White Caps, but he simply won't do it.”

“Won't do it! I reckon not!” Dwight blurted out. “Didn't the young idiot wait in Blackburn's store for Dan Willis to come and shoot the top of his head off? He sat there till past midnight, and wouldn't move an inch till actual proof was brought to him that Willis had left town. Oh, I'm no fool! I know a thing or two. I've watched him and your daughter together. That's at the bottom of it. She sat down on him before she went off to Augusta, but her refusal didn't alter him. He knows Helen thinks a lot of her old negro mammy, and in her absence he simply took up her cause and is fighting mad about it—so mad that he is blind to his political ruin. That's what a man will do for a woman. They say she's about to become engaged down there. I hope she is, and that Carson will have pride enough when he hears of it to let another man do her fighting, and one with nothing to lose by it.”

“She hasn't written me a thing about any engagement,” the Major answered, with some animation; “but my sister highly approves of the match and writes that it may come about. Mr. Sanders is a well-to-do, honorable man of good birth and education: Helen never seemed to get over her brother's sad death. She loved poor Albert more than she ever did me or any one else.”

“And I always thought that it was Carson's association with your son in his dissipation that turned Helen against him. For all I know, she may have thought Carson actually led Albert on and was partly the cause of his sad end.”

“She may have looked at it that way,” the Major said, musingly. They had now reached the porch in the rear of the house and they went together into the wide hall. A colored maid with a red bandanna tied like a turban round her head was dusting the walnut railing of the stairs. Passing through the hall, the old gentlemen turned into the library, a great square room with wide windows and tall, gilt-framed pier-glass mirrors.

“Yes, I'm sure that's what turned her against him,” Dwight continued, “and that is where, between you and Helen, I get mixed up. Why do you always take up for the scamp? It looks to me like you'd resent the way he acted with your son after the boy's terrible end.”

“There is a good deal more in the matter, Henry, than I ever told you about.” Major Warren's voice faltered. “To be plain, that is my secret trouble. I reckon if Helen was to discover the actual truth—all of it—she would never feel the same towards me. I think maybe I ought to tell you. It certainly will explain why I am so much interested in your boy.” They sat down, the owner of the house in a reclining-chair at an oblong, carved mahogany table covered with books and papers, the visitor on a lounge near by.

“Well, it always has seemed odd to me,” old Dwight said. “I couldn't exactly believe you wanted to bring him and Helen together, after your experience with that sort of man under your own roof.”

“It is this way,” said the Major, awkwardly. “To begin with, I am sure, from all I've picked up, that it was not your son that was leading mine on to dissipation, but just the other way. He's dead and gone, but Albert was always ready for a prank of any sort. Henry, I want to talk to you about it because it seems to me you are in the same position in regard to Carson that I was in regard to my poor boy, and I've prayed a thousand times for pardon for what I did in anger and haste. Henry, listen to me. If ever a man made a vital mistake I did, and I'll bear the weight of it to my grave. You know how I worried over. Albert's drinking and his general conduct. Time after time he made promises that he would turn over a new leaf only to break them. Well, it was on the last trip—the fatal one to New York, where he had gone and thrown away so much money. I wrote him a severe letter, and in answer to it I got a pathetic one, saying he was sick and tired of the way he was doing and begging me to try him once more and send him money to pay his way home. It was the same old sort of promise and I didn't have faith in him. I was unfair, unjust to my only son. I wrote and refused, telling him that I could not trust him any more. Hell inspired that letter, Henry—the devil whispered to me that I'd been indulgent to the poor boy's injury. Then came the news. When he was found dead in a small room on the top floor of that squalid hotel—dead by his own hand—my letter lay open beside him.”

“Well, well, you couldn't help it!” Dwight said, most awkwardly, and he crossed his short, fat legs anew and reached for an open box of cigars. “You were trying to do your duty as you saw it, and to the best of your ability.”

“Yes, but my method, Henry, resulted in misery and grief to me and Helen that can never be cured. You see, it is because of that awful mistake that I take such an interest in Carson. I love him because Albert loved him, and because sometimes it seems to me that you are most too quick to condemn him. Oh, he's different! Carson has changed wonderfully since Albert died. He doesn't drink to excess now, and Garner says he has quit playing cards, having only one aim, and that to win this political race—to win it to please you, Henry.”

“Win it!” Dwight sniffed. “He's already as dead as a salt mackerel—laid out stiff and stark by his own bull-headed stupidity. I've always talked down drinking and card-playing, but I have known some men to succeed in life who had such habits in moderation; but you nor I nor no one else ever saw a blockhead succeed at anything. I tell you he'll never make a successful politician. Wiggin will beat the hind sights off of him. Wiggin is simply making capital of the fool's inability to control his temper and sympathies. Wiggin would have let that mob thrash his own father and mother rather than antagonize them and lose their votes. He knows Carson comes of fighting stock, and he will continue to egg Dan Willis and others on, knowing that every resentful word from Carson will make enemies for him by the score.”

“Oh, I can see that, too!” the Major sighed; “but, to save me, I can't help admiring the boy. He thinks the White Caps did wrong that night and he simply can't pretend otherwise. It is the principle of the thing, Henry. He is an unusual sort of candidate, and his stand may ruin his chances, but I—I glory in his firmness. I must say g me to try him once more and send him money to pay his way home. It was the same old sort of promise and I didn't have faith in him. I was unfair, unjust to my only son. I wrote and refused, telling him that I could not trust him any more. Hell inspired that letter, Henry—the devil whispered to me that I'd been indulgent to the poor boy's injury. Then came the news. When he was found dead in a small room on the top floor of that squalid hotel— dead by his own hand—my letter lay open beside him.”

“Well, well, you couldn't help it!” Dwight said, most awkwardly, and he crossed his short, fat legs anew and reached for an open box of cigars. “You were trying to do your duty as you saw it, and to the best of your ability.”

“Yes, but my method, Henry, resulted in misery and grief to me and Helen that can never be cured. You see, it is because of that awful mistake that I take such an interest in Carson. I love him because Albert loved him, and because sometimes it seems to me that you are most too quick to condemn him. Oh, he's different! Carson has changed wonderfully since Albert died. He doesn't drink to excess now, and Garner says he has quit playing cards, having only one aim, and that to win this political race- -to win it to please you, Henry.”

“Win it!” Dwight sniffed. “He's already as dead as a salt mackerel—laid out stiff and stark by his own bull-headed stupidity. I've always talked down drinking and card-playing, but I have known some men to succeed in life who had such habits in moderation; but you nor I nor no one else ever saw a blockhead succeed at anything. I tell you he'll never make a successful politician. Wiggin will beat the hind sights off of him. Wiggin is simply making capital of the fool's inability to control his temper and sympathies. Wiggin would have let that mob thrash his own father and mother rather than antagonize them and lose their votes. He knows Carson comes of fighting stock, and he will continue to egg Dan Willis and others on, knowing that every resentful word from Carson will make enemies for him by the score.”

“Oh, I can see that, too!” the Major sighed; “but, to save me, I can't help admiring the boy. He thinks the White Caps did wrong that night and he simply can't pretend otherwise. It is the principle of the thing, Henry. He is an unusual sort of candidate, and his stand may ruin his chances, but I—I glory in his firmness. I must say that.”

“Oh yes, that's the trouble with you sentimental people,” Dwight fumed. “Between you and the boy's doting mother, the Lord only knows where he'll land. I've overlooked a lot in him in the hope that he'd put this election through, but I shall let him go his own way now. It has come to a pretty pass if I have to see my son beaten to the dust by a man of Wiggin's stamp because of that long-legged negro boy of yours who would have been better long ago if he had been soundly thrashed.”

When his visitor had gone Dwight dropped his unfinished cigar into the grate and went slowly upstairs to his wife's room. At a small-paned window overlooking the flower-garden, on a couch supported in a reclining position by several puffy pillows, was Mrs. Dwight. She was well past middle-age and of extremely delicate physique. Her hair was snowy white, her skin thin to transparency, her veins full and blue.

“That was Major Warren, wasn't it?” she asked, in a soft, sweet voice, as she put down the magazine she had been reading.

“Yes,” Dwight answered, as he went to a little desk in one corner of the room and took a paper from a pigeon-hole and put it into his pocket.

“How did he happen to come over so early?” the lady pursued.

“Because he wanted to, I reckon,” Dwight started out, impatiently, and then a note of caution came into his voice as he remembered the warning of the family physician against causing the patient even the slightest worry. “Warren hasn't a blessed thing to do, you know, from mom till night. So when he strikes a busy man he is apt to hang on to him and talk in his long-winded way about any subject that takes possession of his brain. He's great on showing men how to manage their own affairs. It takes an idle man to do that. If that man hadn't had money left to him he would now be begging his bread from door to door.”

“Somehow I fancied it was about Carson,” Mrs. Dwight sighed.

“There you go!” her husband said, with as much grace of evasion as lay in his sturdy compound. “Lying there from day to day, you seem to have contracted Warren's complaint. You think nobody can drop in even for a minute without coming about your boy—your boy! Some day, if you live long enough, you may discover that the universe was not created solely for your son, nor made just to revolve around him either.”

“Yes, I suppose I do worry about Carson a great deal,” the invalid admitted; “but you haven't told me right out that the Major was not speaking of him.”

The old man's face was the playground of conflcting impulses. He grew red with anger and his lips trembled on the very verge of an outburst, but he controlled himself. In fact, his irritability calmed down as he suddenly saw a loop-hole through which to escape her questioning.

“The truth is,” he said, “Warren was talking about Albert's death. He talked quite a while about it. He almost broke down.”

“Well, I'm so worried about Carson's campaign that I imagine all sorts of trouble,” Mrs. Dwight sighed. “I lay awake nearly all of last night thinking about one little thing. When he was in his room dressing the other day, I heard something fall to the floor. Hilda had taken him some hot water for shaving, and when she came back she told me he had dropped his revolver out of his pocket. You know till then I had had no idea he carried one, and while it may be necessary at times, the idea is very disagreeable.”

“You needn't let that bother you,” Dwight said, as he took his hat to go down to his office at his warehouse. “Nearly all the young men carry them because they think it looks smart. Most of them would run like a scared dog if they saw one pointed at them even in fun.”

“Well, I hope my boy will never have any use for one,” the invalid said. “He is not of a quarrelsome nature. It takes a good deal to make him angry, but when he gets so he is not easily controlled.”