Atalanta in the South/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII.
The garden is the fairest spot in all the wide Rondelet plantation. Here the lilies are all ablow, lining the paths in stately rows and nodding gravely at one another as Margaret walks between them, brushing the dew from their petals with the sweep of her white robe. She passes under an amethyst canopy of wistarias; and leaning against the old tree about which the vine has flung its freshness, she pauses and breathes in the beauty of the scene. A thick hedge of Cherokee-roses screens the garden from the house and offices. Here is no hint of work or business; it is a place to dream in, a place to love in, a place to lie in at peace, when life and love and work are over. Dark and straight, a pair of aged cypresses rise from the midst of all the bloom and perfume of countless flowers. Between the two quiet sentinels is a tomb, lichen-stained, grass-grown. The letters are now untraceable. The Great Mother has blurred out the words which tell by what name, at what time, her child lived and moved above the breast wherein he now lies. Soft-furred, silvery moss gently veils these details, unimportant now; but one word of all the inscription is spared,—"Peace." Margaret, pausing by this sepulchre, breathes a deep sigh; and leaning upon the sculptured urn, reads the lesson of mortality, so often learned, so oft forgotten.
Far off, at the opposite corner of the garden, stands a pavilion, whose sides and roof seem woven of living jasmine and honeysuckle. Here breakfast has been prepared, and hither Sara Harden comes, dainty and fresh as a shepherdess of romance. Her fair, curling hair is gathered high on her head beneath a distracting little hat, all blue ribbons and roses. Her skin is admirably set off by the pale blue of her Watteau dress, and her dewy infantine eyes shine like deep forget-me-nots. A perfectly pretty woman is Sara Harden; beautiful, no one who knows the value of that superlative term would call her. There are no grand lines, no mysterious coming and going of light and shadow in her delicate face; no moments of loveliness obscured for a time and then shining out radiant and all powerful; nothing of the half-painful influence which great beauty holds for those who are enamored of it,—nothing of this has the bonny shepherdess, only a restful, pleasure-giving prettiness, which makes men grateful and even women glad, as they are glad of a beautiful child or a perfect flower.
From the steps of the little pavilion Sara Harden, standing in a flood of sunlight, perceives Margaret's white drapery beneath the sombre cypress.
"Margaret! Margaret—O Mar-ga-ret!"
A handkerchief is waved in answered greeting from the shadowy corner of the garden.
"Come here, I say; don't you hear me?" She had not said it before.
Stopping only to gather a shaft of golden lilies, Margaret comes obedient to the small tyrant of the iron will and caressing voice.
"Where have you been? How white you look—b-r-r-r-r-r! what were you doing in the one dark spot of all this pleasant garden? An unhealthy creature, mousing about in creepy corners instead of sunning yourself in the summer-house."
Margaret has drawn near by this time, and stands, with a sad smile on her face, looking at the joyous creature before her, thoughtlessly happy, full of health and brilliant vitality.
"You have been prowling about that old, forgotten tomb with an uncanny joy that is positively immoral. What do you mean by wearing that look of stoical gloom, in the face of this glorious morning, in the anticipation of a good breakfast? Ingrate, look at me."
"You would make the most confirmed stoic smile, you are so delightfully gay," said Margaret, with a little sigh.
"My dear, you are now in the gloom of youth; I have passed through it myself. I, even I,—the frivolous, the light-headed,—have felt much of the sort of sorrow which is now vexing you. It is, in a way, an imaginary sorrow. You are learning the realities of life; you are finding out that Death and Grief and Love and Sin are not purely allegorical figures sculptured on the walls which bound your life-path, but real creatures, with which you must grapple and wrestle, which you must conquer or be conquered by, not once, but a thousand times. You are finding this out. You have read of these four personages, you have seen many pictures of them, you have perhaps typified them with your own hands; but you have never realized their existence till now."
Margaret shook her head and straightened a fold of her friend's gown. She had a profound conviction that the feelings to which she was now a prey had never been experienced before, and that her debonair friend was incapable of suffering as she suffered; and yet Sara Harden bore a wound in her heart which not even time had healed,—the grief of a mother for her only child, the pity of a wife for her childless husband. She smiled and touched Margaret's pale cheek with her rosy lips,—a woman who had loved and suffered, and was strong to bear the burden of her grief so that its shadow might not darken the life of any other human creature.
To these two fair women came Philip Rondelet, the old planter leaning on his arm, Colonel Lagrange, General Ruysdale, Bouton de Rose, and Darius Harden following. Soon after was served a breakfast of honey, whose sweetness had been gathered from the flowers of the garden, of butter and cream, for which a pair of black-nosed Jerseys cropping the grass near by were responsible, of fish caught in the neighboring bayou, eggs from the farm-yard, bread light and sweet as the most fastidious sybarite could desire, and coffee, that Creole coffee, of unsurpassed fragrance and flavor. They lingered over the table, for it was the last meal they were to take together, and host and guests were equally sorry that the brief visit had come to an end.
The quiet of the morning was suddenly broken by the faint echo of a whistle. "Alack! it is the steamer," cried Mrs. Harden; "that means that we must leave this enchanting place, perhaps forever."
Twenty minutes later they were standing on the river-bank watching the approach of the mammoth white boat. Handkerchiefs were waved, and in answer to this primitive signal the huge craft, cleverly handled as an Indian's canoe, drew along-side the levee. The gangway was thrown, and while the monster held its breath for a moment, the friends were safely transferred to the lower deck; another sixty seconds, and the steamer was on her course again, the group of new passengers in her stern waving a last greeting to the spare old man standing hat in hand beneath a giant live-oak gray and venerable as himself.
The steamer had a fair number of passengers, and was heavily freighted with cotton. Groups of men smoking, talking, and playing cards were collected on her decks and in the after-saloon.
Most of them were rough-looking fellows enough, drovers from Texas, horse-traders from everywhere, rancheros from the Far West, and a gang of Chinamen bound for South America to labor in a climate too deadly even for the negro. Railroads must be built, rivers must be spanned, mountains must be tunnelled for the march of commerce; and for these things, which the American covets but cannot achieve, the despised Mongolian is imported, and treated as the African never was, execrated and scoffed at by a nation which owes no little of its prosperity to-day to his tireless, uncomplaining industry.
Captain Silas Martin, a burly fellow born beside the river and bred to thread its ever-shifting channels, was an old acquaintance of Colonel Lagrange. He made that worthy man and his friends heartily welcome to the good ship "Crescent Queen," of which he was part owner and sole commander. He was a jovial soul, full of native wit and abounding in anecdotes of his life upon the river. He remembered one trip made in the old troublous times, when he had stood at the wheel under the guard of two armed Union officers who watched him day and night. One false turn of the wheel in that puzzling, sinuous channel, and his life would have been forfeit.
He had been captured, and placed at the wheel of a war transport bound from New Orleans to a point higher up the river with a cargo of ammunition and stores. Of little use were the government pilots,—Northern men,—on a river which from week to week shifts its course, now swerving to the right and stealing a piece of territory on that side, and leaving a shoal on the other hand, again building an island or washing away a spit of the soft bottom land. One who belonged to the free masonry of Mississippi pilots must guide the boat, and Silas Martin was chosen as the likeliest man to bring the precious freight to its destination. He had brought the transport safely up the river; he loved his life, and he loved his own word. Both were pledged to the young officers, who never left him, sleeping or waking.
"Is not the 'Crescent Queen' a very fast boat, Captain Martin?" asked Margaret.
"She is called so, miss. Colonel Lagrange there can tell you something of her speed."
But the Colonel only nodded an assent to this remark, and a few moments after drew Margaret to the other side of the deck, from which was to be had a view of a late crevasse. Half a hundred men were at work on the levee fighting the river which had brought desolation to the plantation and ruin to the crops. The lawn was still submerged, and the blossoms of the taller rose-bushes looked over the invading water, blighted, but not yet dead. A row-boat was moored outside the door of the manor-house, whose broad stone steps were half covered by the tide.
"What havoc the river has made here!" said Margaret. "But it was not only to see this that you brought me away from the others?"
"No, my dear young lady; you had opened a dangerous topic of conversation. The last time I heard Captain Martin questioned about the speed of the 'Crescent Queen' the consequences were rather serious. There was a new boat on the river. The Captain was afraid of her, I think; but when she blew the signal for a race, he ordered our speed increased. All the passengers begged Martin not to accept the challenge, but he answered them pretty roughly. The new boat pressed us hard, and I saw our furnace crammed with barrels of oil, with crates of fruit, with cotton and freight. No matter what, anything that would burn was tossed into the roaring fire; but the new boat gained on us. I had bet all the money in my pockets on the 'Crescent Queen.' There was not a man on board, down to the nigger firemen, who had not put up something on the race. I remember I asked the Captain if he thought we should beat her. He was at the speaking-tube, and roared out, 'Send up my whiskey—straight;' then turning to me he said, 'Beat her, sir, or bust!' It did not quite come to that, for by the time we had reached a narrow turn in the river the rival boat had almost caught up with us; there was not room for both steamers abreast, and in a flash Martin turned the 'Queen's' head and drove her bow straight into the side of the other boat. She never raced again, I believe, and the 'Crescent Queen' has not been challenged since. That was some years ago. Things are changed now, and the times are quieter," the Colonel added, with a sigh which Margaret interpreted, perhaps unjustly, as an expression of regret at the altered conditions of travel on the Mississippi.
Margaret's stateroom commanded a view of the deck; and when, late that evening, she opened her door and prepared to steal out for a last look at the river, she found herself confronted by a group of card-players. One of them might have been, judging from his dress, a clergyman. The other two were rough-looking fellows, one of whom was greatly excited. He smote the table with his clenched hand, muttering fierce imprecations. Visions of Mr. Jack Oakhurst crossed Margaret's mind; that delicate-featured young man, with the correct broad cloth suit and melancholy blue eyes, must belong to the same class as that gambler hero, and the red-faced drover and his friend were probably being "plucked." So great was the young girl's interest in the card-players that she had failed to notice three men who had come on board at the last stop; not so Philip Rondelet, whom people were wont to call unobservant. He had seen the pair of man-hunters push their manacled prisoner upon the lower deck and chain him by a ring in the gunwale to a log of wood, whereon he sat, or rather crouched. The prisoner was a negro of the most degraded type; a criminal, one could not doubt him to be. Crime was stamped upon his low, animal forehead and frightful wolfish features with terrible distinctness. So much the occupants of the saloon-deck noted at a glance; and seeing that, thought no more of the writhing creature swaying on his rough seat with every motion of the boat. But Philip Rondelet, to whom it was given to see all of pain and suffering that crossed his path, observed that the prisoner was suffering keenly. He passed Margaret's half-open door without a glance, went down the companion-way, and addressed one of the men in charge of the prisoner: "That man seems to be in great pain."
"Think likely," was the laconic reply. The captive groaned. Philip saw that his arm was wounded and in need of care.
"I am a surgeon," he continued, "and I mean to dress that wound."
"Hands off my prisoner, young man. I don't stand no interference in my affairs," brutally protested the guardian of the law.
"Excuse me, sir,"—Philip's voice was as courteous and sweet as if he had been addressing Margaret herself,—"but I consider this to be my affair; and it is I who will brook no interference."
He moved nearer the prisoner. The officer with an oath started to his feet; and laying his hand on Philip's shoulder, warned him as he loved his life not to lay a finger on the negro.
The dispute had attracted the attention of some of the passengers, though the card-players had not looked up from their game. The instant the officer touched Rondelet, the physician wrenched himself from his grasp, and placing himself beside the negro, said in a voice whose silver tones, though hardened to steel, had lost nothing of their polish: "I am a doctor of medicine. This man is badly hurt, and I propose to dress his wound. I am alone and unarmed, but I mean to put this thing through."
His voice never shook, though he was covered by the revolver in the bully's hand.
There was a stir among the passengers.
"I 'll play you double or quits on the next game," said the red-faced drover. "And now, young man, go ahead with your splintering, and I 'll stand by to see fair play, if it 's only to stop that nigger's d— noise."
He shuffled the cards, handed them to the clerical-looking young man, and cocking his seven-shooter, pointed it at the officer. Quick to see the altered situation, the latter lowered his weapon. It was evident that public sympathy was with the physician, who was already at work tearing his fine linen handkerchief into narrow strips to form a bandage. The clerical gentleman fetched some water in a tin cup; and then, resuming his seat, dealt the cards, and the game was taken up at the point where it had been interrupted. Rondelet sponged the ugly wound and deftly disposed the linen- bandage about the arm.
"Now loosen those handcuffs," he said authoritatively.
"I 'll see you damned first," growled the officer.
"Unlock those bracelets,—do you hear?—before I count three. The game's mine."
It was the drover who spoke, fingering his revolver as he did so.
The fetters were taken from the prisoner's wrists.
"Undo the chain that holds him to the log," said Philip.
The officer swore under his breath; but after a glance at the faces of the men about him, complied.
Philip made his patient as comfortable as he could under the circumstances, and after giving him an opiate, turned and left the lower deck.
Margaret had witnessed the whole scene. She did not speak to him as he passed her door on his way to the forward deck, where Mrs. Harden was sitting.
"What has happened to you, Philip?" Sara Harden asked as soon as he joined her. He told her what had passed.
She looked at him admiringly, and laid a soft, gemmed hand on his arm.
"Philip, you are a person for an emergency. How excited you look! See, your hand is positively trembling."
"Yes? as long as it was firm while I probed the wound, what does it matter?" He was nettled by what she had said.
"Philip, I don't believe in platonics, and yet I positively love you at this moment,—do you know what I mean?—without being a particle in love with you."
"What is the distinction?"
"When one loves a person, it is a disinterested feeling; when one is in love, one wants the person for one's own. Now I certainly am not in love with you, for I should n't know what to do with you if you were given to me this moment; and yet I am quite certain that I love you as I might love a child,—and yet you are a great deal better and stronger than I am—"
"You are very good to me, dear friend."
"I wish I could be really good to you, but I cannot; you are so quaint and misty and intangible, I am never quite sure about you. But there, of course you don't care what I feel about you; the blind of Miss Ruysdale's stateroom is infinitely more interesting to you than anything I can say."
Philip looked penitent, and made an effort to keep his eyes from wandering in the direction of Margaret's room.
"You really love her so much?"
"You know," he answered simply.
"Yes, and I know she is n't worthy of it." She was irritated, and spoke sharply.
"It hurts me to hear you say that, dear friend," he protested.
"She 's a good, sweet, honest girl," Mrs. Harden continued, "but she no more appreciates you, nor the worth of what you give her, than a royal baby knows the value of his jewelled coral. He breaks it just as carelessly as another child smashes a twopenny rattle. Margaret plays with your heart just as if it were not a solid lump of refined gold, but a miserable pinchbeck thing, like most men's hearts, to be gilded and regilded any number of times to suit the requirements of each new passion."
"If it is hers to do as she likes with?"
"But she will neither take it nor leave it. I know just what she will do,—she will trifle with it till—"
"Listen to me," interrupted Philip. "You say my heart is purer than some other men's. I know not whether this is so; but if it be true, it is because she has purified it, it is because of my love for her. That is my treasure. Whether I win her love or not, I have always my love for her. You pity me,—me, who would rather a thousand times give up life itself than outgrow my love. Happy or unhappy, it is more to me than all else. Could I believe for a moment that I could survive this love, I should pray that I might die to-night."
"It is not often that we women are loved like that, Philip," said Sara Harden very gravely. "I believe I shall think better of men all my life for what you have said to me to-night. You have lifted your whole sex in my estimation, mon ami; and this is not the first noble lesson that you have taught me, nor will it be the last. It is something for a man to feel that he is understood and appreciated even by a woman with whom he is not in love. Believe me, I know the value of your true heart and your honest hand. And now I must go inside. Good night to you; Dari is waiting for me."