The Leopard's Spots (1902)/Book 2/Chapter 9
BEFORE boarding the train he was to take for Raleigh, he lingered with Mrs. Durham talking, talking, talking about the wonder of his love. As he arose to leave he said,
"Now, Mother dear"
"Charlie, you just say that so beautifully to make me your slave."
"Of course I do. What I was going to say is, I can't write to her. I don't dare. You can. Tell her all about me won't you? Everything that you think will interest and please her, and that will be discreet. Your intuitions will tell you how far to go. Tell her how hard I'm working and what an important mission I've undertaken, and the tremendous things that hang on its outcome. And tell her how impatiently I'm waiting for her to come to the Springs. Be sure to tell her that."
"All right. I'll act as your attorney in your absence. But hurry back, she must not get here first. I want you to be on the spot."
"I'll be here if I have to give up politics and go into business—and you know how I hate that word 'business.'"
"I'll telegraph you if she comes."
"Don't let her come till I get back. Tell her the hotel isn't fit to receive guests yet—it never is for that matter—but anything to give me time to get here."
He worked with indomitable courage for two weeks, visiting the principal towns in the state, and everywhere arousing intense enthusiasm. There was something contagious in his spirit. The young fellows were charmed by his eager intense way of looking at things, they caught the infection and he made hundreds of staunch friends.
"You're just in time!" cried his mother greeting him with radiant face on his return. "She is coming to-morrow. I've a beautiful letter from her. I think one of the sweetest letters a girl ever wrote."
"Let me see it!"
"No."
"Why, Mother, I thought you were all on my side!"
"But I'm not. I'm a woman, and you can't see some things she says."
"Then it's something awfully nice about me."
"Maybe the opposite."
"Then you'd resent it for me."
"I love her too, sir."
"Let me see the tip end of it where she signs her name!"
"You can see that much, there"
"Doesn't she write a lovely hand!" He looked long and lovingly. "That pretty name!—Sallie! So old-fashioned, and so homelike. It's music, isn't it?"
"I didn't know you could be so silly, Charlie."
"It is funny, isn't it? You know I think after all, we are made out of the same stuff, saint and sinner, philosopher and fool. The differences are only skin deep."
"You don't think she is made out of ordinary clay?"
"Oh! Lord, no, I meant the men. Every woman is something divine to me. I think of God as a woman, not a man—a great loving Mother of all Life. If I ever saw the face of God it was in my mother's face."
"Hush! you will make me do anything you wish."
"No, no, I don't want to see that letter unless you think it best."
"Well, you will not see any more of it, sir."
When Gaston met them at the depot with a carriage to take Sallie, her mother, and Helen Lowell, her Boston schoolmate, to the Springs, the first passenger to alight was Bob St. Clare.
"What in the thunder are you doing here! This town is quarantined against you!" said Gaston.
"Hush!" said Bob in a stage whisper. "She's here. There's her valise."
"That's why you can't land. Two's company, three's a crowd. I like you, Bob. But I won't stand for this."
The crowd were pouring off the train and had cut off Sallie's party in the centre of the car.
"Gaston, I just came up for your sake. I'm looking after Miss Lowell. I'm lost, ruined. Scared to say a word. I thought maybe, you'd help me out. We'll pool chances. I'll talk for you and you talk for me."
"It's a bargain, St. Clare."
"I want a separate carriage,—get me one quick."
In a few moments, the brief introduction over, Gaston was seated in the carriage facing Sallie and her mother whirling along the road, over the long hills toward the Campbell Sulphur Springs in the woods, two miles from the town.
How beautiful and fresh she looked to him even in a dusty travelling dress! He was drinking the nectar from the depths of her eyes.
"Now don't you think Helen the prettiest girl you ever saw, Mr. Gaston?" she asked.
"I hadn't noticed it."
"Where were your eyes?"
"Elsewhere. I'm so glad you are going to spend a month at the Springs, Miss Sallie. I used to go to school there when a little boy. They had a girl's school there in the winter and boys under twelve were admitted. I know every nook and corner of the big forest back of the hotel. I'll see that you don't get lost."
"That will be fine. But you must bring every good-looking boy in the county and make him bow down and worship Helen. She is not used to it, but she is tickled to death over these Southern boys, and I'm going to give her the best time she ever had in her life."
"I'll do everything you command—except bow down myself. Bob's agreed to do that."
She smiled in spite of her effort to look serious, and her mother pinched her arm. She laughed.
"So you and Bob St. Clare were out there plotting before we could get out of the train?"
"Nothing unlawful, I assure you."
The first day she allowed Gaston to monopolise, and then began his torture. She declared there were others with whom she must be friendly. She determined to give a ball to Helen the next week, and began preparations.
It was a new business for Gaston, but he did his best to please her, in a pathetic half-hearted sort of way. He ran all sorts of errands, and executed her orders with tact.
"Oh! Sallie let the ball go. I don't care for it. I can do nothing to ever repay you for the good time I've been having," said Helen as they sat in her room one night.
"We are going to have it, I tell you. I don't care how much Mr. Gaston sulks. I'm not taking orders from him."
"No, but you'd like to—you know it."
"What an idea!"
"You know you like him better than all the others put together."
"Nonsense. I'm as free as a bird."
"Then what are you blushing for?"
"I'm not." But her face was scarlet.
"You Southern girls are so queer. The moment you like a man you're as sly as a cat, and deny that you even know him. When I find the man I love I don't care who knows it, if he loves me."
"What do you think of Bob St. Clare?"
"I like him."
"Hasn't he made love to you yet?"
"No, and the only one of the crowd who hasn't. I don't mind confessing that I never had love made to me before this visit. In Boston it's a serious thing for a young man to call once. The second call, means a family council, and at the third he must make a declaration of his intentions or face consequences. Down here, the boys don't seem to have anything to do except to make their girl friends happy, and feel they are the queens of the earth, and that their only mission is to minister to them. And some of your girls are engaged to six boys at the same time."
"Don't you like it?"
"It's glorious. I feel that if I hadn't come down here to see you I'd have missed the meaning of life."
"Don't our boys make love beautifully?"
"I never dreamed of anything like it. They make it so seriously, so dead in earnest, you can't help believing them."
"And Bob hasn't said a word?"
"Hasn't breathed a hint."
"Then you have him sure. They are hit hard when they are silent like that. Bob made love to me the second day he ever saw me."
"Don't tease me, dear," said Helen as she put her pretty rosy cheek against the dark beauty of the South. "Do you really think he likes me seriously?"
"He's crazy about you, goose!"
There was the sound of a kiss.
"I can't tell stories about it like you, Sallie, I'm afraid I'm in love with him," she whispered.
"Well, I'll make him court you to-morrow or have him thrashed, if you say so."
"Don't you dare!"
"Then do just as I tell you about this ball and get yourself up regardless."
On the night of the ball, Gaston, sitting out on the porch, felt nervous and fidgety, like a fish out of water. He knew he had no business there, and yet he couldn't go away. They had a quarrel about the ball. Sallie had insisted that Gaston honour her by coming in evening dress whether he danced or not.
"But, Miss Sallie, I'll feel like a fool. Everybody in the country knows that I never entered a ball-room."
"Do you care so much what everybody thinks about you?"
"No, but I care what I think of myself."
"Well, if you don't come in full dress suit, I won't speak to you."
He turned pale in spite of his effort at self control. Then a queer steel-like look came into his eyes.
"I shall be more than sorry to fail to please you, but I have no dress suit. I have never had time for social frivolities. I can't afford to buy one for this occasion. I couldn't be nigger enough to hire one, so that's the end of it. I'll have to come dressed in my own fashion or stay at home."
"Then you can stay at home," she snapped.
"I'll not do it," he coolly replied.
"Well, I like your insolence."
"I'm glad you do. I'll come as I come to all such functions, an outsider. I'll sit out here on the porch in the shadows and see it from afar. If I could only dance, I assure you I'd try to fill every number of your card. Not being able to do so, I simply decline to make a fool of myself."
"For that compliment, I'll compromise with you. Wear that big pompous Prince Albert suit you spoke in at Independence, and I'll come out on the porch and chat with you a while."
He sat there now in the shadows waiting for this ball to begin. It was a clear night the first week in June. The new moon was hanging just over the tree tops. His heart was full to bursting with the thought that the girl he loved would, in a few minutes, be whirling over that polished floor to the strains of a waltz, with another man's arm around her. He never knew how deeply he hated dancing before—that rhythmic touch of the human body, set to the melody of motion, and voiced in the passionate cry of music. He felt its challenge to his love to mortal combat,—his love that claimed this one woman as his own, body and soul!
The music from the Italian band was in full swing, its plaintive notes instinct with the passion of sunny Italy, a music all Southern people love.
He felt that he should choke. A sudden thought came to him. Tearing a sheet of paper from a note book he scrawled this line upon it.
"Dear Miss Sallie:—Please let me see you a moment in the parlour before you enter the ball-room. Gaston."
At least he would see her in her ball costume first. Yes, and if she should hate him for it, he would beg her not to dance that night. He saw McLeod, bowing and scraping in the ball-room arrayed in faultless full
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dress, and glancing toward the door. He knew lie was waiting for her to ask her to dance. How he would like to wring his handsome neck!
The boy returned immediately and said the lady was waiting in the parlour. He entered with a sense of fear and confusion.
She came to him with her bare arm extended, a dazzling vision of beauty. She was dressed in a creamy white crêpe ball gown, cut modestly decolleté over her full bust and gleaming shoulders, sleeveless, and held with tiny straps across the curve of the upper arm.
He was stunned. She smiled in triumph, conscious of her resistless power.
"Forgive me for my selfishness in keeping you here just a moment from the rest. I wished to see you first."
"What? to inspect like Mama, to see if I look all right?"
"No, with a mad desire to keep you as long as possible from the others."
Then she looked up at him and said slowly and softly,
"Would it please you very much if I were not to dance to-night?"
"I wouldn't dare ask so selfish a thing of you. It is with you a simple habit of polite society, and you enjoy it as a child does play. I understand that, and yet if you do not dance to-night, I feel as though I would crawl round this world on my hands and knees for you if you would ask it. There are men waiting for you in that ball room whom I hate."
She looked at him timidly as though she were afraid he was about to say too much and replied,
"Then I will not dance to-night. I'll just preside over the ball and let Helen be the queen."
"Words have no power to convey my gratitude. I count all my little triumphs in life nothing to this. You promised to join me on the porch. Don't change that part of the programme. I will talk to your mother until you come."
Gaston went down stairs treading on air. He sought her mother and devoted himself to her with supreme tact. He discovered her tastes and prejudices and paid her that knightly deference some young men express easily and naturally to their elders. He had always been a favourite with old people. He prided himself on it. This faculty he regarded as a badge of honour. As he sat there and talked with this frail little woman, his heart went out to her in a great yearning love. She was the mother of the bride of his soul. He would love her forever for that. No matter whether she loved him or hated him. He would love the mother who gave to his thirsty lips the water of Life.
Drawn irresistibly by the magnetism of his mind and manner Mrs. Worth forgot the flight of time and thought but a moment had past when an hour after the ball had opened, Sallie came out leaning on McLeod's arm.
"Mama, have you been monopolising Mr. Gaston for a whole hour?"
"He hasn't been here a half hour, Miss!" cried her mother.
"He's been here an hour and ten minutes. I'm going to tell Papa on you just as soon as I get home."
"Go back to your dancing."
"No, thank you, I have an engagement to take a walk with your beau. Come Mr. Gaston."
They walked to the spring and along the winding path by the brook at the foot of the hill, and found a rustic seat. They were both silent for several moments.
"I saw you were charming Mama, or I would have come sooner."
"I hope she likes me."
"She has been praising you ever since your visit to Independence. I never saw her talk so long to a young man in my life before. You must have hypnotised her."
"I hope so."
A strange happiness filled her heart. She was afraid to look it in the face; and yet she dared to play with the thought.
"Are you enjoying your triumph to-night? I've had war inside."
"I feel like I am the Emperor of the World and that the Evening Star is smiling on my court!"
She smiled, tossed her head, leaned against the tree and said,
"I wonder if you are in the habit of saying things like that to girls?"
"Upon my soul and honour, no."
"Then thanks. I'll dream about that, maybe."
They returned to the hotel and McLeod claimed her. They went back the same walk, and by a freak of fate he chose the same seat she had just vacated with Gaston.
"Miss Sallie, you are of age now. You know that I have loved you passionately since you were a child. I have made my way in life, I am hungry for a home and your love to glorify it. Why will you keep me waiting?"
"Simply because I know now I do not love you, Allan, and I never will. Once and forever, here, to-night I give you my last answer, I will not be your wife."
"Then don't give the answer to-night. I can wait," he interrupted. "I am just on the threshold of a great career. Success is sure. I can offer you a dazzling position. Don't give me such an answer. Leave the old answer—to wait."
"No, I will not. I do not love you. If you were to become the President, it would not change this fact, and it is everything."
"Then you love another."
"That is none of your business, sir. I have known you since childhood. I have had ample time to know my own mind."
"All right, we will say good-bye for the present. You have made me a laughing stock of young fools, but I can stand it. I'll not give you up, and if I can't have you, no other man shall."
"If you leave my will out of the calculation, you will make a fatal mistake."
"Women have been known to change their wills."
Before leaving her that night Gaston held her hand for an instant as he bade her good-bye and said, "Miss Sallie, I thank you with inexpressible gratitude for the honour you have done me."
"I've just been wondering what you have done to deserve it?"
"Absolutely nothing,—that's why it is so sweet. This has been the happiest day I ever lived. I cannot see you again before you go. I leave to-morrow on urgent business. May I come to Independence to see you?"
"Yes, I'll be delighted to see you. Good-night."
Gaston was the last to return to Hambright. He walked the two miles through the silent starlit woods. He took a short cut his bare feet had travelled as a boy, and with uncovered head walked slowly through the dim aisles of great trees. It was good, this cool silence and the soft mantle of the night about his soul! The stars whispered love. The wind sighed it through the leaves.
He had withdrawn from the church in his college days because he had grown to doubt everything—God, heaven, hell, and immortality. To-night as he walked slowly home he heard that wonderful sentence of the old Bible ringing down the ages, wet with tears and winged with hope,
"God is love!"
He said it now softly and reverently, and the tears came unbidden from his soul. He felt close to the heart of things. He knew he was close to the heart of nature. What if nature was only another name for God? And he whispered it again,
"God is love!"
"Ah! If I only knew it I would bow down and worship Him forever!" he cried.
When Sallie reached her mother's room that night, Mrs. Worth was seated by her window.
"Why didn't you dance?"
"Didn't care to."
"Sly Miss, you can't fool me. You didn't dance because Mr. Gaston couldn't. That was a dangerously loud way to talk to him."
"How did you like him, Mama?"
"Come here, dear, and sit on the edge of my chair. I wish I knew when you were in earnest about a man. I like him more than I can tell you. He talked to me so beautifully about his mother, I wanted to kiss him. He is charming."
"Why, Mama!"
"I'd like him for a son. There's a wealth of deep tenderness and manly power in him."
"Mama, you're getting giddy!"
But she kissed her mother twice when she said good night.