The Colonel's Dream Part 14

They work children there from six years old up, an' half of 'em die of consumption before they're grown. It's a durned outrage, an' if I ever go to the Legislatur', for which I mean to run, I'll try to have it stopped."

"I hope you will be elected," said the colonel. "What time does the train go back to Clarendon?"

"Four o'clock, if she's on time--but it may be five."

"Do you suppose I can get dinner at the hotel?"

"Oh, yes! I sent word up that I 'lowed you might be back, so they'll be expectin' you."

The proprietor was at the desk when the colonel went in. He wrote his name on the book, and was served with an execrable dinner. He paid his bill of half a dollar to the taciturn proprietor, and sat down on the shady porch to smoke a cigar. The proprietor, having put the money in his pocket, came out and stepped into his buggy, which was still standing alongside the piazza. The colonel watched him drive a stone's throw to a barroom down the street, get down, go in, come out a few minutes later, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, climb into the buggy, drive back, step out and re-enter the hotel.

It was yet an hour to train time, and the colonel, to satisfy an impulse of curiosity, strolled over to the court house, which could be seen across the square, through the trees. Requesting leave of the Clerk in the county recorder's office to look at the records of mortgages, he turned the leaves over and found that a large proportion of the mortgages recently recorded--among them one on the hotel property--had been given to Fetters.

The whistle of the train was heard in the distance as the colonel recrossed the square. Glancing toward the hotel, he saw the landlord come out, drive across the square to the station, and sit there until the pa.s.sengers had alighted. To a drummer with a sample case, he pointed carelessly across the square to the hotel, but made no movement to take the baggage; and as the train moved off, the colonel, looking back, saw him driving back to the hotel.

Fetters had begun to worry the colonel. He had never seen the man, and yet his influence was everywhere. He seemed to brood over the country round about like a great vampire bat, sucking the life-blood of the people. His touch meant blight. As soon as a Fetters mortgage rested on a place, the property began to run down; for why should the nominal owner keep up a place which was destined in the end to go to Fetters?

The colonel had heard grewsome tales of Fetters's convict labour plantation; he had seen the operation of Fetters's cotton-mill, where white humanity, in its fairest and tenderest form, was stunted and blighted and destroyed; and he had not forgotten the scene in the justice's office.

The fighting blood of the old Frenches was stirred. The colonel's means were abundant; he did not lack the sinews of war. Clarendon offered a field for profitable investment. He would like to do something for humanity, something to offset Fetters and his kind, who were preying upon the weaknesses of the people, enslaving white and black alike. In a great city, what he could give away would have been but a slender stream, scarcely felt in the rivers of charity poured into the ocean of want; and even his considerable wealth would have made him only a small stockholder in some great aggregation of capital. In this backward old town, away from the great centres of commerce, and scarcely feeling their distant pulsebeat, except when some daring speculator tried for a brief period to corner the cotton market, he could mark with his own eyes the good he might accomplish.

It required no great stretch of imagination to see the town, a few years hence, a busy hive of industry, where no man, and no woman obliged to work, need be without employment at fair wages; where the trinity of peace, prosperity and progress would reign supreme; where men like Fetters and methods like his would no longer be tolerated.

The forces of enlightenment, set in motion by his aid, and supported by just laws, should engage the retrograde forces represented by Fetters. Communities, like men, must either grow or decay, advance or decline; they could not stand still. Clarendon was decaying. Fetters was the parasite which, by sending out its roots toward rich and poor alike, struck at both extremes of society, and was choking the life of the town like a rank and deadly vine.

The colonel could, if need be, spare the year or two of continuous residence needed to rescue Clarendon from the grasp of Fetters. The climate agreed with Phil, who was growing like a weed; and the colonel could easily defer for a little while his scheme of travel, and the further disposition of his future.

So, when he reached home that night, he wrote an answer to a long and gossipy letter received from Kirby about that time, in which the latter gave a detailed account of what was going on in the colonel's favourite club and among their mutual friends, and reported progress in the search for some venture worthy of their mettle. The colonel replied that Phil and he were well, that he was interesting himself in a local enterprise which would certainly occupy him for some months, and that he would not visit New York during the summer, unless it were to drop in for a day or two on business and return immediately.

A letter from Mrs. Jerviss, received about the same time, was less easily disposed of. She had learned, from Kirby, of the chivalrous manner in which Mr. French had protected her interests and spared her feelings in the fight with Consolidated Bagging. She had not been able, she said, to thank him adequately before he went away, because she had not known how much she owed him; nor could she fittingly express herself on paper. She could only renew her invitation to him to join her house party at Newport in July. The guests would be friends of his--she would be glad to invite any others that he might suggest. She would then have the opportunity to thank him in person.

The colonel was not unmoved by this frank and grateful letter, and he knew perfectly well what reward he might claim from her grat.i.tude. Had the letter come a few weeks sooner, it might have had a different answer. But, now, after the first pang of regret, his only problem was how to refuse gracefully her offered hospitality. He was sorry, he replied, not to be able to join her house party that summer, but during the greater part of it he would be detained in the South by certain matters into which he had been insensibly drawn. As for her thanks, she owed him none; he had only done his duty, and had already been thanked too much.

So thoroughly had Colonel French entered into the spirit of his yet undefined contest with Fetters, that his life in New York, save when these friendly communications recalled it, seemed far away, and of slight retrospective interest. Every one knows of the "blind spot" in the field of vision. New York was for the time being the colonel's blind spot. That it might rea.s.sert its influence was always possible, but for the present New York was of no more interest to him than Canton or Bogota. Having revelled for a few pleasant weeks in memories of a remoter past, the reaction had projected his thoughts forward into the future. His life in New York, and in the Clarendon of the present--these were mere transitory embodiments; he lived in the Clarendon yet to be, a Clarendon rescued from Fetters, purified, rehabilitated; and no compa.s.sionate angel warned him how tenacious of life that which Fetters stood for might be--that survival of the spirit of slavery, under which the land still groaned and travailed--the growth of generations, which it would take more than one generation to destroy.

In describing to Judge Bullard his visit to the cotton mill, the colonel was not sparing of his indignation.

"The men," he declared with emphasis, "who are responsible for that sort of thing, are enemies of mankind. I've been in business for twenty years, but I have never sought to make money by trading on the souls and bodies of women and children. I saw the little darkies running about the streets down there at Carthage; they were poor and ragged and dirty, but they were out in the air and the suns.h.i.+ne; they have a chance to get their growth; to go to school and learn something. The white children are worked worse than slaves, and are growing up dulled and stunted, physically and mentally. Our folks down here are mighty short-sighted, judge. We'll wake them up. We'll build a model cotton mill, and run it with decent hours and decent wages, and treat the operatives like human beings with bodies to nourish, minds to develop; and souls to save. Fetters and his crowd will have to come up to our standard, or else we'll take their hands away."

Judge Bullard had looked surprised when the colonel began his denunciation; and though he said little, his expression, when the colonel had finished, was very thoughtful and not altogether happy.

_Fourteen_

It was the week after the colonel's house warming.

Graciella was not happy. She was sitting, erect and graceful, as she always sat, on the top step of the piazza. Ben Dudley occupied the other end of the step. His model stood neglected beside him, and he was looking straight at Graciella, whose eyes, avoiding his, were bent upon a copy of "Jane Eyre," held open in her hand. There was an unwonted silence between them, which Ben was the first to break.

"Will you go for a walk with me?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, Ben," she replied, "but I have an engagement to go driving with Colonel French."

Ben's dark cheek grew darker, and he d.a.m.ned Colonel French softly beneath his breath. He could not ask Graciella to drive, for their old buggy was not fit to be seen, and he had no money to hire a better one. The only reason why he ever had wanted money was because of her.

If she must have money, or the things that money alone would buy, he must get money, or lose her. As long as he had no rival there was hope. But could he expect to hold his own against a millionaire, who had the garments and the manners of the great outside world?

"I suppose the colonel's here every night, as well as every day," he said, "and that you talk to him all the time."

"No, Ben, he isn't here every night, nor every day. His old darky, Peter, brings Phil over every day; but when the colonel comes he talks to grandmother and Aunt Laura, as well as to me."

Graciella had risen from the step, and was now enthroned in a splint-bottomed armchair, an att.i.tude more in keeping with the air of dignity which she felt constrained to a.s.sume as a cloak for an uneasy conscience.

Graciella was not happy. She had reached the parting of the ways, and realised that she must choose between them. And yet she hesitated.

Every consideration of prudence dictated that she choose Colonel French rather than Ben. The colonel was rich and could gratify all her ambitions. There could be no reasonable doubt that he was fond of her; and she had heard it said, by those more experienced than she and therefore better qualified to judge, that he was infatuated with her.

Certainly he had shown her a great deal of attention. He had taken her driving; he had lent her books and music; he had brought or sent the New York paper every day for her to read.

He had been kind to her Aunt Laura, too, probably for her niece's sake; for the colonel was kind by nature, and wished to make everyone about him happy. It was fortunate that her Aunt Laura was fond of Philip. If she should decide to marry the colonel, she would have her Aunt Laura come and make her home with them: she could give Philip the attention with which his stepmother's social duties might interfere.

It was hardly likely that her aunt entertained any hope of marriage; indeed, Miss Laura had long since professed herself resigned to old maidenhood.

But in spite of these rosy dreams, Graciella was not happy. To marry the colonel she must give up Ben; and Ben, discarded, loomed up larger than Ben, accepted. She liked Ben; she was accustomed to Ben. Ben was young, and youth attracted youth. Other things being equal, she would have preferred him to the colonel. But Ben was poor; he had nothing and his prospects for the future were not alluring. He would inherit little, and that little not until his uncle's death. He had no profession. He was not even a good farmer, and trifled away, with his useless models and mechanical toys, the time he might have spent in making his uncle's plantation productive. Graciella did not know that Fetters had a mortgage on the plantation, or Ben's prospects would have seemed even more hopeless.

She felt sorry not only for herself, but for Ben as well--sorry that he should lose her--for she knew that he loved her sincerely. But her first duty was to herself. Conscious that she possessed talents, social and otherwise, it was not her view of creative wisdom that it should implant in the mind tastes and in the heart longings destined never to be realised. She must discourage Ben--gently and gradually, for of course he would suffer; and humanity, as well as friends.h.i.+p, counselled kindness. A gradual breaking off, too, would be less harrowing to her own feelings.

"I suppose you admire Colonel French immensely," said Ben, with a.s.sumed impartiality.

"Oh, I like him reasonably well," she said with an equal lack of candour. "His conversation is improving. He has lived in the metropolis, and has seen so much of the world that he can scarcely speak without saying something interesting. It's a liberal education to converse with people who have had opportunities. It helps to prepare my mind for life at the North."

"You set a great deal of store by the North, Graciella. Anybody would allow, to listen to you, that you didn't love your own country."

"I love the South, Ben, as I loved Aunt Lou, my old black mammy. I've laid in her arms many a day, and I 'most cried my eyes out when she died. But that didn't mean that I never wanted to see any one else.

Nor am I going to live in the South a minute longer than I can help, because it's too slow. And New York isn't all--I want to travel and see the world. The South is away behind."

She had said much the same thing weeks before; but then it had been spontaneous. Now she was purposely trying to make Ben see how unreasonable was his hope.

Ben stood, as he obscurely felt, upon delicate ground. Graciella had not been the only person to overhear remarks about the probability of the colonel's seeking a wife in Clarendon, and jealousy had sharpened Ben's perceptions while it increased his fears. He had little to offer Graciella. He was not well educated; he had nothing to recommend him but his youth and his love for her. He could not take her to Europe, or even to New York--at least not yet.

"And at home," Graciella went on seriously, "at home I should want several houses--a town house, a country place, a seaside cottage. When we were tired of one we could go to another, or live in hotels--in the winter in Florida, at Atlantic City in the spring, at Newport in the summer. They say Long Branch has gone out entirely."

Ben had a vague idea that Long Branch was by the seaside, and exposed to storms. "Gone out to sea?" he asked absently. He was sick for love of her, and she was dreaming of watering places.

"No, Ben," said Graciella, compa.s.sionately. Poor Ben had so little opportunity for schooling! He was not to blame for his want of knowledge; but could she throw herself away upon an ignoramus? "It's still there, but has gone out of fas.h.i.+on."

"Oh, excuse me! I'm not posted on these fas.h.i.+onable things."

Ben relapsed into gloom. The model remained untouched. He could not give Graciella a house; he would not have a house until his uncle died. Graciella had never seemed so beautiful as to-day, as she sat, dressed in the cool white gown which Miss Laura's slender fingers had done up, and with her hair dressed after the daintiest and latest fas.h.i.+on chronicled in the _Ladies' Fireside Journal_. No wonder, he thought, that a jaded old man of the world like Colonel French should delight in her fresh young beauty!

But he would not give her up without a struggle. She had loved him; she must love him still; and she would yet be his, if he could keep her true to him or free from any promise to another, until her deeper feelings could resume their sway. It could not be possible, after all that had pa.s.sed between them, that she meant to throw him over, nor was he a man that she could afford to treat in such a fas.h.i.+on. There was more in him than Graciella imagined; he was conscious of latent power of some kind, though he knew not what, and something would surely happen, sometime, somehow, to improve his fortunes. And there was always the hope, the possibility of finding the lost money.

He had brought his great-uncle Ralph's letter with him, as he had promised Graciella. When she read it, she would see the reasonableness of his hope, and might be willing to wait, at least a little while.

Any delay would be a point gained. He shuddered to think that he might lose her, and then, the day after the irrevocable vows had been taken, the treasure might come to light, and all their life be spent in vain regrets. Graciella was skeptical about the lost money. Even Mrs.