The Colonel's Dream Part 6

Miss Laura's cheek flushed unseen in the shadow of the porch.

"Ah, Henry, that would be telling! But to marry me, one must have married the family, for I could not have left them--they have had only me. I have not been unhappy. I do not know that I would have had my life different."

Graciella and her friends had finished their song, the piano had ceased to sound, and the visitors were taking their leave. Graciella went with them to the gate, where they stood laughing and talking. The colonel looked at his watch by the light of the open door.

"It is not late," he said. "If my memory is true, you too played the piano when you--when I was young."

"It is the same piano, Henry, and, like our life here, somewhat thin and weak of tone. But if you think it would give you pleasure, I will play--as well as I know how."

She readjusted the veil, which had slipped from her mother's face, and they went into the parlour. From a pile of time-stained music she selected a sheet and seated herself at the piano. The colonel stood at her elbow. She had a pretty back, he thought, and a still youthful turn of the head, and still plentiful, glossy brown hair. Her hands were white, slender and well kept, though he saw on the side of the forefinger of her left hand the telltale marks of the needle.

The piece was an arrangement of the well-known air from the opera of _Maritana_:

_"Scenes that are brightest, May charm awhile, Hearts which are lightest And eyes that smile.

Yet o'er them above us, Though nature beam, With none to love us, How sad they seem!"_

Under her sympathetic touch a gentle stream of melody flowed from the old-time piano, scarcely stronger toned in its decrepitude, than the spinet of a former century. A few moments before, under Graciella's vigorous hands, it had seemed to protest at the dissonances it had been compelled to emit; now it seemed to breathe the notes of the old opera with an almost human love and tenderness. It, too, mused the colonel, had lived and loved and was recalling the memories of a brighter past.

The music died into silence. Mrs. Treadwell was awake.

"Laura!" she called.

Miss Treadwell went to the door.

"I must have been nodding for a minute. I hope Colonel French did not observe it--it would scarcely seem polite. He hasn't gone yet?"

"No, mother, he is in the parlour."

"I must be going," said the colonel, who came to the door. "I had almost forgotten Phil, and it is long past his bedtime."

Miss Laura went to wake up Phil, who had fallen asleep after supper.

He was still rubbing his eyes when the lady led him out.

"Wake up, Phil," said the colonel. "It's time to be going. Tell the ladies good night."

Graciella came running up the walk.

"Why, Colonel French," she cried, "you are not going already? I made the others leave early so that I might talk to you."

"My dear young lady," smiled the colonel, "I have already risen to go, and if I stayed longer I might wear out my welcome, and Phil would surely go to sleep again. But I will come another time--I shall stay in town several days."

"Yes, _do_ come, if you _must_ go," rejoined Graciella with emphasis.

"I want to hear more about the North, and about New York society and--oh, everything! Good night, Philip. _Good_ night, Colonel French."

"Beware of the steps, Henry," said Miss Laura, "the bottom stone is loose."

They heard his footsteps in the quiet street, and Phil's light patter beside him.

"He's a lovely man, isn't he, Aunt Laura?" said Graciella.

"He is a gentleman," replied her aunt, with a pensive look at her young niece.

"Of the old school," piped Mrs. Treadwell.

"And Philip is a sweet child," said Miss Laura.

"A chip of the old block," added Mrs. Treadwell. "I remember----"

"Yes, mother, you can tell me when I've shut up the house,"

interrupted Miss Laura. "Put out the lamps, Graciella--there's not much oil--and when you go to bed hang up your gown carefully, for it takes me nearly half an hour to iron it."

"And you are right good to do it! Good night, dear Aunt Laura! Good night, grandma!"

Mr. French had left the hotel at noon that day as free as air, and he slept well that night, with no sense of the forces that were to constrain his life. And yet the events of the day had started the growth of a dozen tendrils, which were destined to grow, and reach out, and seize and hold him with ties that do not break.

_Seven_

The constable who had arrested old Peter led his prisoner away through alleys and quiet streets--though for that matter all the streets of Clarendon were quiet in midafternoon--to a guardhouse or calaboose, constructed of crumbling red brick, with a rusty, barred iron door secured by a heavy padlock. As they approached this structure, which was sufficiently forbidding in appearance to depress the most lighthearted, the strumming of a banjo became audible, accompanying a mellow Negro voice which was singing, to a very ragged ragtime air, words of which the burden was something like this:

_"W'at's de use er my wo'kin' so hahd?

I got a' 'oman in de white man's yahd.

W'en she cook chicken, she save me a wing; W'en dey 'low I'm wo'kin', I ain' doin' a thing!"_

The grating of the key in the rusty lock interrupted the song. The constable thrust his prisoner into the dimly lighted interior, and locked the door.

"Keep over to the right," he said curtly, "that's the n.i.g.g.e.rs' side."

"But, Mistah Haines," asked Peter, excitedly, "is I got to stay here all night? I ain' done nuthin'."

"No, that's the trouble; you ain't done nuthin' fer a month, but loaf aroun'. You ain't got no visible means of suppo't, so you're took up for vagrancy."

"But I does wo'k we'n I kin git any wo'k ter do," the old man expostulated. "An' ef I kin jus' git wo'd ter de right w'ite folks, I'll be outer here in half a' hour; dey'll go my bail."

"They can't go yo' bail to-night, fer the squire's gone home. I'll bring you some bread and meat, an' some whiskey if you want it, and you'll be tried to-morrow mornin'."

Old Peter still protested.

"You n.i.g.g.e.rs are always kickin'," said the constable, who was not without a certain grim sense of humour, and not above talking to a Negro when there were no white folks around to talk to, or to listen.

"I never see people so hard to satisfy. You ain' got no home, an' here I've give' you a place to sleep, an' you're kickin'. You doan know from one day to another where you'll git yo' meals, an' I offer you bread and meat and whiskey--an' you're kickin'! You say you can't git nothin' to do, an' yit with the prospect of a reg'lar job befo' you to-morrer--you're kickin'! I never see the beat of it in all my bo'n days."

When the constable, chuckling at his own humour, left the guardhouse, he found his way to a nearby barroom, kept by one Clay Jackson, a place with an evil reputation as the resort of white men of a low cla.s.s. Most crimes of violence in the town could be traced to its influence, and more than one had been committed within its walls.

"Has Mr. Turner been in here?" demanded Haines of the man in charge.

The bartender, with a backward movement of his thumb, indicated a door opening into a room at the rear. Here the constable found his man--a burly, bearded giant, with a red face, a cunning eye and an overbearing manner. He had a bottle and a gla.s.s before him, and was unsociably drinking alone.