John March, Southerner. Cable George Washington

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СКАЧАТЬ and promenade. Mr. Leggett knew quite as well as Garnet and Ravenel that the coming visitors were behind the bill he had just voted for.

      Johanna, the letter said, would be at the ball as an attendant in the ladies' cloak-room. It bade him meet her that night at eleven on the old bridge that spanned a ravine behind the hotel, where a back street ended at the edge of a neglected grove.

      "Lawd, Lawd! little letteh, little letteh! is you de back windeh o' heavm, aw is you de front gate o' hell? Th' ain't no way to tell but by tryin'! Oh, how kin I resk it? An' yit, how kin I he'p but resk it?

      "Sheh! ain't I resk my life time an' time ag'in jess for my abstrac' rights to be a Republican niggeh?

      "Ef they'd on'y shoot me! But they won't. They won't evm hang me; they'll jess tie me to a tree and bu'n me – wet me th'oo with coal-oil, tech a match – O Lawd!" He poured a tremendous dram, looked at it long, then stepped to the window, and with a quaking hand emptied both glass and bottle on the ground, as if he knew life depended on a silent tongue in a sober head.

      And then he glanced once more at the letter, folded it, and let it slowly into his pocket.

      "'Happy as a big sun-floweh,' is you? I ain't. I ain't no happier'n a pig on the ice. O it's mawnstus p'ecipitous! But it's gran'! It's mo'n gran'; it's muccurial! it's puffic'ly nocturnial!" With an exalted solemnity of face, half ardor, half anguish, he stiffened heroically and gulped out,

      "I'll be thah!"

      Friday came. John March and half-a-dozen other Rosemonters, a committee to furnish "greens" for garlanding the walls and doorways, hurried about in an expectancy and perturbation, now gay, now grave, that seemed quite excessive as the mere precursors of an evening dance. They gathered their greenery from the grove down beyond the old bridge and ravine, where the ground was an unbroken web of honeysuckle vines.

      On this old bridge, at the late night hour fixed in the letter, Cornelius met a counterfeit, thickly-veiled Johanna, and swore to marry her.

      "Black as you is? Yass! The blackeh the betteh! An' yit I'd marry you ef you wuz pyo white! – Colo' line! – I'll cross fifty colo' lines whenev' I feels like it!"

      By midnight every Rosemonter at the ball had heard this speech repeated, and knew that it had hardly left the mulatto's throat before he had fled with shrieks of terror from the pretended ghosts of his earlier wives, and with the curses of a coward's rage from the vain clutches of his would-be captors. – But we go too fast.

      XVIII.

      THE PANGS OF COQUETRY

      Night fell. The hotel shone. The veranda was gay with Chinese lanterns. The muffled girls were arriving. The musicians tuned up. There were three little fiddles, one big one, a flageolet, and a bassoon.

      "Twinkling stars are laughing, love,

      Laughing on you and me"

      – sang the flageolet and little fiddles, while the double bass and the bassoon grunted out their corroborative testimony with melodious unction. Presently the instruments changed their mood, the flageolet pretended to be a mocking-bird, all trills, the fiddles passionately declared they were dreaming now-ow of Hallie – tr-r-r-ee! – dear Hallie – tr-r-r-ee! – sweet Hallie – tr-r-r-ee! and the bassoon and double bass responded from the depths of their emotions, "Hmmh! hmmh! hm-hm-hmmh!"

      Ravenel and his guests appeared on the floor; Major Garnet, too. He had been with them, here, yonder, all day. Barbara remained at home, although her gowns were the full length now, and she coiled her hair. General Halliday and Fannie arrived. Her dress, they said, was the prettiest in the room. Jeff-Jack introduced everybody to the Northerners. The women all asked them if Suez wasn't a beautiful city, and the guests praised the town, its site, its gardens, "its possibilities," its ladies – ! – and its classic river.

      Try to look busy or dignified as he might, all these things only harried John March. He kept apart from Fannie. Indeed, what man of any self-regard – he asked his mangled spirit – could penetrate the crowd that hovered about her, ducking, fawning, giggling, attitudinizing – listening over one another's shoulders, guffawing down each other's throats? It hurt him to see her show such indiscriminating amiability; but he felt sure he knew her best, and hoped she was saying to herself, "Oh, that these sycophants were gone, and only John and I and the twinkling stars remained to laugh together! Why does he stay away?"

      "O my darling Nellie Gray, they have taken you away," wept the fiddles, and "Who? who? who-who-who?" inquired the basses in deep solicitude.

      Well, the first dance would soon come, now; the second would shortly follow, and then he and Fannie could go out on the veranda and settle all doubts. With certainty established in that quarter, whether it should bring rapture or despair, he hoped to command the magnanimity to hold over a terrified victim the lash of retribution, and then to pronounce upon him, untouched, at last, the sentence of exile. He spoke aloud, and looking up quickly to see if anyone had heard, beheld his image in a mirror. He knew it instantly, both by its frown and by the trick of clapping one hand on the front of the thigh with the arm twisted so as to show a large seal-ring bought by himself with money that should have purchased underclothes for his father. He jerked it away with a growl of self-scorn, and went to mingle with older men, to whom, he fancied, the world meant more than young women and old scores.

      He stopped in a part of the room where two Northerners were laughing at a keen skirmish of words between Garnet and Halliday. These two had gotten upon politics, and others were drawing near, full of eager but unplayful smiles.

      "Never mind," said Garnet, in retort, "we've restored public credit and cut the rottenness out of our government."

      The Northerners nodded approvingly, and the crowd packed close.

      "Garnet," replied the general, with that superior smile which Garnet so hated, "States, like apples – and like men – have two sorts of rottenness. One begins at the surface and shows from the start; the other starts from the core, and doesn't show till the whole thing is rotten."

      For some secret reason, Garnet reddened fiercely for an instant, and then, with a forced laugh, addressed his words to one of the guests.

      Another of the strangers was interested in the severe attention a strong-eyed Rosemont boy seemed to give to Halliday's speech. But it was only John March, who was saying, in his heart:

      "She's got a perfect right to take me or throw me, but she's no right to do both!"

      Only the Northerners enjoyed Halliday. The Suez men turned away in disdain.

      The music struck a quadrille, sweetly whining and hooting twice over before starting into doubtful history,

      "In eighteen hundred and sixty-one – to the war! to the war!"

      The dance springs out! Gray jackets and white trousers; tarlatan, flowers, and fans; here and there a touch of powder or rouge; some black broadcloth and much wrinkled doeskin. Jeff-Jack and Fannie move hand in hand, and despite the bassoon's contemptuous "pooh! pooh! poo-poo-pooh!" the fiddles declare, with petulant vehemence, that —

      "In eighteen-hundred-and-sixty-one, the Yankees they the war begun, but we'll all! get! blind! drunk! when Johnnie comes marching home."

      "You see we play the national – oh! no, I believe that's not one – but we do play them!" said a native.

      John didn't march home, although when some one wanted a window open which had been decorated to stay shut, СКАЧАТЬ