Jupiter Lights Part 21

Four days had pa.s.sed slowly by. "What do you think, judge, of this theory about the shooting,--the one they believe at Romney?" said Paul, on the fifth morning.

"It's probable enough. n.i.g.g.e.rs are const.i.tutionally timid, and they always have pistols nowadays; these two boys, it seems, had come over from the mainland to hide; they had escaped from a lock-up, got a boat somewhere and crossed; that much is known. Your brother, perhaps, went wandering about the island; if he came upon them suddenly, with that knife in his hand, like as not they fired."

"Ferdie was found lying very near the point where _your_ boat was kept."

"And the n.i.g.g.e.rs might have been hidden just there. But I don't think we can tell exactly where our boat was; Cicely doesn't remember--I have asked her."

"Miss Bruce may have clearer ideas."

"No; Eve seems to have a greater confusion about it than Cicely even; she cannot speak of it clearly at all."

"Yes, I have noticed that," said Paul.

"I suppose it is because, at the last, she had it all to do; she is a brave woman."

Paul was silent.

"Don't you think so?" said the judge.

"I wasn't there. I don't know what she did."

"You're all alike, you young men; she's too much for you," said the judge, with a chuckle.

"Why too much? She seems to me very glum and shy. When you say that we are all alike, do you mean that Ferdie didn't admire her, either? Yet Ferdie is liberal in his tastes," said the elder brother, smiling.

But the judge did not want to talk about Ferdie. "So you find her shy?

She did not strike us so at Romney. Quiet enough--yes. But very decidedly liking to have her own way."

Paul dismissed the subject. "I suppose those two scamps, who shot him, got safely away?"

"Yes, they were sure to have run off on the instant; they had the boat they came over in, and before daylight they were miles to the southward probably; I dare say they made for one of the swamps. In the old days we could have tracked them; but it's not so easy now. And even if we got them we couldn't string them up."

"You wouldn't hang them?"

"By all the G.o.ds, I would!" said the planter, bringing his fist down upon the table with a force that belonged to his youth.

"Ferdie may have attacked them first, you know."

"What difference does that make? d.a.m.nation, sir! are they to be allowed to fire upon their masters?"

"They did not fire very well, these two; according to Dr. Knox, the wound is not serious; his despatch this morning says that Ferdie is coming on admirably."

"Yes, I suppose he is," said the old man, relapsing into gloom.

"As soon as he is up and about, I am going down there," Paul went on; "I must see him and have a serious talk. Some new measures must be taken. I don't think it will be difficult when I have once made him see his danger; he is so extraordinarily intelligent."

"I wish he were dull, then,--dull as an owl!" said the judge, with a long sigh.

"Yes, regarded simply as husbands, I dare say the dull may be safer,"

responded Paul. "But you must excuse me if I cannot look upon Ferdie merely as the husband of your daughter; I expect great things of him yet."

"Granddaughter. If her father had lived--my boy Duke--it would have been another story; Duke wouldn't have been a broken old man like me." And the judge leaned his head upon his hand.

"I beg your pardon, sir; don't mind my roughness. It's only that I'm fond of Ferdie, and proud of him; he has but that one fault. But I appreciate how you feel about Cicely; we must work together for them both."

Paul had risen, and was standing before him with outstretched hand.

"Thank you; you mean well," said the judge. He had let his hand be taken, but he did not look up. He felt that he could never really like this man--never.

"I am to understand, then, that you approve of my plan?" Paul went on, after a short silence. "Cicely to stay here for the present--the house, I hope, is fairly comfortable--and then, when Ferdie is better, I to go down there and see what I can do; I have every hope of doing a great deal! Oh, yes, there's one more thing; _you_ needn't feel obliged to stay here any longer than you want to, you know; I can see to Cicely.

Apparently, too, Miss Bruce has no intention of leaving her."

"I shall stay, sir--I shall stay."

"On my own account, I hope you will; I only meant that you needn't feel that you must; I thought perhaps there was something that called you home."

"Calls me home? Do you suppose we do anything down there nowadays with the whole coast ruined? As for the house, Sabrina is there, and women like illness; they absolutely dote on medicines, and doctors, and ghastly talking in whispers."

"Very well; I only hope you won't find it dull, that's all. The mine isn't bad; you might come out there occasionally. And the steamers stop two or three times a day. There's a good deal going on in the town, too; building's lively."

"I am much obliged to you."

"But you don't care for liveliness," pursued Paul, with a smile. "I am afraid there isn't much else. I haven't many books, but Kit Hollis has; he is the man for you. Queer; never can decide anything; always beating round the bush; still, in his way, tremendously well read and clever."

"He appears to be a kind of dry-nurse to you," said the judge, rising.

Paul laughed, showing his white teeth. He was very good-natured, his guest had already discovered that.

The judge was glad that their conversation had come to an end. He could no longer endure dwelling upon sorrow. Trouble was not over for them by any means; their road looked long and dark before them. But for the moment Cicely and her child were safe under this roof; let them enjoy that and have a respite. As for himself, he could--well, he could enjoy the view.

The view consisted of the broad lake in front, and the deep forest which stretched unbroken towards the east and the west. The water of the lake was fresh, the great forest was primeval; this made the effect very unlike that of the narrow salt-water sounds, and the chain of islands, large and small, with their gardens and old fields. The South had forgotten her beginnings; but here one could see what all the new world had once been, here one could see traces of the first struggle for human existence with the inert forces of nature. With other forces, too, for Indians still lived here. They were few in number, harmless; but they carried the mind back to the time of sudden alarms and the musket laid ready to the hand; the days of the block-house and the guarded well, the high stockade. The old planter as he walked about did not think of these things. The rough forest was fit only for rough-living pioneers; the Indians were but another species of n.i.g.g.e.r; the virgin air was thin and raw,--he preferred something more thick, more civilized; the great fresh-water sea was abominably tame, no one could possibly admire it; Port aux Pins itself was simply hideous; it was a place composed entirely of beginnings and mud, talk and ambition, the sort of place which the Yankees produced wherever they went, and which they loved; that in itself described it; how could a Southern gentleman like what they loved?

And Port aux Pins was ugly. Its outlying quarters were still in the freshly plucked state, deplumed, scarred, with roadways half laid out, with shanties and wandering pigs, discarded tin cans and other refuse, and everywhere stumps, stumps. Within the town there were one or two streets where stood smart wooden houses with Mansard-roofs. But these were elbowed by others much less smart, and they were hustled by the scaffolding of the new mansions which were rising on all sides, and, with republican freedom, taking whatever room they found convenient during the process. Even those abodes which were completed as to their exteriors had a look of not being fully furnished, a blank, wide-eyed, unwinking expression across their facades which told of bare floors and echoing s.p.a.ces within. Always they had temporary fences. Often paths of movable planks led up to the entrance. Day after day a building of some sort was voyaging through Port aux Pins streets by means of a rope and windla.s.s, a horse, and men with boards; when it rained, the house stopped and remained where it was, waiting for the mud to dry; meanwhile the roadway was blocked. But n.o.body minded that. All these things, the all-pervading beginnings, the jokes and slang, the smell of paint, and always the breathless constant hurry, were hateful to the old Georgian.

It might have been said, perhaps, that between houses and a society uncomfortable from age, falling to pieces from want of repairs, and houses and a society uncomfortable from youth, unfurnished, and enc.u.mbered with scaffolding, there was not much to choose. But the judge did not think so; to his mind there was a great deal to choose.

As the days pa.s.sed, Christopher Hollis became more and more his companion; the judge grew into the habit of expecting to see his high head, topped with a silk hat, put stealthily through the crevice of the half-open door of Paul's dining-room (Hollis never opened a door widely; whether coming in or going out, he always squeezed himself through), with the query, "h.e.l.lo! What's up?" There was never anything up; but the judge, sitting there forlornly, with no companion but the local newspaper (which he loathed), was glad to welcome his queer guest.

Generally they went out together; Port aux Pins people grew accustomed to seeing them walking down to the end first of one pier, then of the other, strolling among the stumps in the suburbs, or sitting on the pile of planks which adorned one corner of the Public Square, the long-legged, loose-jointed Kit an amusing contrast to the small, precise figure by his side.

"I say, he's pretty hard up for entertainment, that old gentleman of yours," announced Hollis one day, peering in through the crevice of the door of Paul Tennant's office in the town.

"I depended on you to entertain him," answered Paul without lifting his head, which was bent over a ledger.

"Well, I've taken him all over the place, I've pretty nearly trotted his legs off," Hollis responded, edging farther in, the door sc.r.a.ping the b.u.t.tons of his waistcoat as he did so. "And I've shot off all my Latin at him too--all I can remember. I read up on purpose."

"Is he such a scholar, then?"

"No, he ain't. But it does him good to hear a little Horace in such an early-in-the-morning, ten-minutes-ago place as this. See here, Paul; if you keep him on here long he won't stand it--he'll mizzle out. He'll simply die of Potterpins."