Colonel Starbottle's Client

He had become quite dialectic in his appeal, as if youthfully reverting to some accent of the nursery, or as if he were exhorting her in some recognized shibboleth of a section. Miss Sally rose and shut down the piano. Then leaning over it on her elbows, her rounded little chin slightly elevated with languid impertinence, and one saucy foot kicked backwards beyond the hem of her white cotton frock, she said: “And let me tell you, Mister Chester Brooks, that it’s just such God-forsaken, infant phenomenons as you who want to run the whole country that make all this fuss, when you ain’t no more fit to be trusted with matches than Judy’s children. What do YOU know of Mr. Jo Corbin, when you don’t even know that he’s from Shelbyville, and as good a Suth’ner as you, and if he hasn’t got niggers it’s because they don’t use them in his parts? Yo’r for all the world like one o’ Mrs. Johnson’s fancy bantams that ain’t quit of the shell afore they square off at their own mother. My goodness! Sho! Sho-o-o!” And suiting the action to the word the young lady, still indolently, even in her simulation, swirled around, caught her skirts at the side with each hand, and lazily shaking them before her in the accepted feminine method of frightening chickens as she retreated backwards, dropped them suddenly in a profound curtsey and swept out of the parlor.

Nevertheless, as she entered the sitting-room she paused to listen, then, going to the window, peeped through the slits of the Venetian blind and saw her youthful admirer, more dejected in the consciousness of his wasted efforts and useless attire, mount his showy young horse, as aimlessly spirited as himself, and ride away. Miss Sally did not regret this; neither had she been entirely sincere in her defense of her mysterious correspondent. But, like many of her sex, she was trying to keep up by the active stimulus of opposition an interest that she had begun to think if left to itself might wane. She was conscious that her cousin Julia, although impertinent and illogical, was right in considering her first epistolary advances to Corbin as a youthful convert’s religious zeal. But now that her girlish enthusiasm was spent, and the revival itself had proved as fleeting an excitement as the old “Tournament of Love and Beauty,” which it had supplanted, she preferred to believe that she enjoyed the fascinating impropriety because it was the actual result of her religious freedom. Perhaps she had a vague idea that Corbin’s conversion would expiate her present preference for dress and dancing. She had certainly never flirted with him; they had never exchanged photographs; there was not a passage in his letters that might not have been perused by her parents,—which, I fear, was probably one reason why she had never shown her correspondence; and beyond the fact that this letter-writing gave her a certain importance in her own eyes and those of her companions, it might really be stopped. She even thought of writing at once to him that her parents objected to its further continuance, but remembering that his usual monthly letter was now nearly due, she concluded to wait until it came.

It is to be feared that Miss Sally had little help in the way of family advice, and that the moral administration of the Dows household was as prematurely developed and as precociously exhausted as the estate and mansion themselves. Captain Dows’ marriage with Josephine Jeffcourt, the daughter of a “poor white,” had been considered a mesalliance by his family, and his own sister, Miranda Dows, had abandoned her brother’s roof and refused to associate with the Jeffcourts, only returning to the house and an armed neutrality at the death of Mrs. Dows a few years later. She had taken charge of Miss Sally, sending her to school at Nashville until she was recalled by her father two years ago. It may be imagined that Miss Sally’s correspondence with Jeffcourt’s murderer had afforded her a mixed satisfaction; it was at first asserted that Miss Sally’s forgiveness was really prompted by “Miss Mirandy,” as a subtle sarcasm upon the family. When, however, that forgiveness seemed to become a source of revenue to the impoverished Jeffcourts, her Christian interference had declined.

For this reason, possibly, the young girl did not seek her aunt in the bedroom, the dining-room, or the business-room, where Miss Miranda frequently assisted Captain Dows in the fatuous and prejudiced mismanagement of the house and property, nor in any of the vacant guest-rooms, which, in their early wreck of latter-day mahogany and rosewood, seemed to have been unoccupied for ages, but went directly to her own room. This was in the “L,” a lately added wing that had escaped the gloomy architectural tyranny of the main building, and gave Miss Sally light, ventilation, the freshness and spice of new pine boards and clean paper, and a separate entrance and windows on a cool veranda all to herself. Intended as a concession to the young lady’s traveled taste, it was really a reversion to the finer simplicity of the pioneer.

New as the apartment appeared to be, it was old enough to contain the brief little records of her maidenhood: the childish samplers and pictures; the sporting epoch with its fox-heads, opossum and wild-cat skins, riding-whip, and the goshawk in a cage, which Miss Sally believed could be trained as a falcon; the religious interval of illustrated texts, “Rock of Ages,” cardboard crosses, and the certificate of her membership with “The Daughters of Sion” at the head of her little bed, down to the last decadence of frivolity shown in the be-ribboned guitar in the corner, and the dance cards, favors, and rosettes, military buttons, dried bouquets, and other love gages on the mantelpiece.

The young girl opened a drawer of her table and took out a small packet of letters tied up with a green ribbon. As she did so she heard the sound of hoofs in the rear courtyard. This was presently followed by a step on the veranda, and she opened the door to her father with the letters still in her hand. There was neither the least embarrassment nor self-consciousness in her manner.

Captain Dows, superficially remarkable only for a certain odd combination of high military stock and turned-over planter’s collar, was slightly exalted by a sympathetic mingling of politics and mint julep at Pineville Court House. “I was passing by the post-office at the Cross Roads last week, dear,” he began, cheerfully, “and I thought of you, and reckoned it was about time that my Pussy got one of her letters from her rich Californian friend—and sure enough there was one. I clean forgot to give it to you then, and only remembered it passing there to-day. I didn’t get to see if there was any gold-dust in it,” he continued, with great archness, and a fatherly pinch of her cheek; “though I suspect that isn’t the kind of currency he sends to you.”

“It IS from Mr. Corbin,” said Miss Sally, taking it with a languid kind of doubt; “and only now, paw, I was just thinking that I’d sort of drop writing any more; it makes a good deal of buzzing amongst the neighbors, and I don’t see much honey nor comb in it.”

“Eh,” said the Captain, apparently more astonished than delighted at his daughter’s prudence. “Well, child, suit yourself! It’s mighty mean, though, for I was just thinking of telling you that Judge Read is an old friend of this Colonel Starbottle, who is your friend’s friend and lawyer, and he says that Colonel Starbottle is WITH US, and working for the cause out there, and has got a list of all the So’thern men in California that are sound and solid for the South. Read says he shouldn’t wonder if he’d make California wheel into line too.”

“I don’t see what that’s got to do with Mr. Corbin,” said the young girl, impatiently, flicking the still unopened letter against the packet in her hand.

“Well,” said the Captain, with cheerful vagueness, “I thought it might interest you,—that’s all,” and lounged judicially away.

“Paw thinks,” said Miss Sally, still standing in the doorway, ostentatiously addressing her pet goshawk, but with one eye following her retreating parent, “Paw thinks that everybody is as keen bent on politics as he is. There’s where paw slips up, Jim.”

Re-entering the room, scratching her little nose thoughtfully with the edge of Mr. Corbin’s letter, she went to the mantelpiece and picked up a small ivory-handled dagger, the gift of Joyce Masterton, aged eighteen, presented with certain verses addressed to a “Daughter of the South,” and cut open the envelope. The first glance was at her own name, and then at the signature. There was no change in the formality; it was “Dear Miss Sarah,” and “Yours respectfully, Jo Corbin,” as usual. She was still secure. But her pretty brows contracted slightly as she read as follows:—

“I’ve always allowed I should feel easier in my mind if I could ever get to see Mrs. Jeffcourt, and that may be she might feel easier in hers if I stood before her, face to face. Even if she didn’t forgive me at once, it might do her good to get off what she had on her mind against me. But as there wasn’t any chance of her coming to me, and it was out of the question my coming to her and still keeping up enough work in the mines to send her the regular money, it couldn’t be done. But at last I’ve got a partner to run the machine when I’m away. I shall be at Shelbyville by the time this reaches you, where I shall stay a day or two to give you time to break the news to Mrs. Jeffcourt, and then come on. You will do this for me in your Christian kindness, Miss Dows—won’t you? and if you could soften her mind so as to make it less hard for me I shall be grateful.

“P. S.—I forgot to say I have had HIM exhumed—you know who I mean—and am bringing him with me in a patent metallic burial casket,—the best that could be got in ‘Frisco, and will see that he is properly buried in your own graveyard. It seemed to me that it would be the best thing I could do, and might work upon her feelings—as it has on mine. Don’t you?

“J. C.”

Miss Sally felt the tendrils of her fair hair stir with consternation. The letter had arrived a week ago; perhaps he was in Pineville at that very moment! She must go at once to the Jeffcourts,—it was only a mile distant. Perhaps she might be still in time; but even then it was a terribly short notice for such a meeting. Yet she stopped to select her newest hat from the closet, and to tie it with the largest of bows under her pretty chin; and then skipped from the veranda into a green lane that ran beside the garden boundary. There, hidden by a hedge, she dropped into a long, swinging trot, that even in her haste still kept the languid deliberation characteristic of her people, until she had reached the road. Two or three hounds in the garden started joyously to follow her, but she drove them back with a portentous frown, and an ill-aimed stone, and a suppressed voice. Yet in that backward glance she could see that her little Eumenides—Mammy Judy’s children—were peering at her from below the wooden floor of the portico, which they were grasping with outstretched arms and bowed shoulders, as if they were black caryatides supporting—as indeed their race had done for many a year—the pre-doomed and decaying mansion of their master.

CHAPTER III

Happily Miss Sally thought more of her present mission than of the past errors of her people. The faster she walked the more vividly she pictured the possible complications of this meeting. She knew the dull, mean nature of her aunt, and the utter hopelessness of all appeal to anything but her selfish cupidity, and saw in this fatuous essay of Corbin only an aggravation of her worst instincts. Even the dead body of her son would not only whet her appetite for pecuniary vengeance, but give it plausibility in the eyes of their emotional but ignorant neighbors. She had still less to hope from Julia Jeffcourt’s more honest and human indignation but equally bigoted and prejudiced intelligence. It is true they were only women, and she ought to have no fear of that physical revenge which Julia had spoken of, but she reflected that Miss Jeffcourt’s unmistakable beauty, and what was believed to be a “truly Southern spirit,” had gained her many admirers who might easily take her wrongs upon their shoulders. If her father had only given her that letter before, she might have stopped Corbin’s coming at all; she might even have met him in time to hurry him and her cousin’s provocative remains out of the country. In the midst of these reflections she had to pass the little hillside cemetery. It was a spot of great natural beauty, cypress-shadowed and luxuriant. It was justly celebrated in Pineville, and, but for its pretentious tombstones, might have been peaceful and suggestive. Here she recognized a figure just turning from its gate. It was Julia Jeffcourt.

Her first instinct—that she was too late and that her cousin had come to the cemetery to make some arrangements for the impending burial—was, however, quickly dissipated by the young girl’s manner.

“Well, Sally Dows, YOU here! who’d have thought of seeing you to-day? Why, Chet Brooks allowed that you danced every set last night and didn’t get home till daylight. And you—you that are going to show up at another party to-night too! Well, I reckon I haven’t got that much ambition these times. And out with your new bonnet too.”

There was a slight curl of her handsome lip as she looked at her cousin. She was certainly a more beautiful girl than Miss Sally; very tall, dark and luminous of eye, with a brunette pallor of complexion, suggesting, it was said, that remote mixture of blood which was one of the unproven counts of Miss Miranda’s indictment against her family. Miss Sally smiled sweetly behind her big bow. “If you reckon to tie to everything that Chet Brooks says, you’ll want lots of string, and you won’t be safe then. You ought to have heard him run on about this one, and that one, and that other one, not an hour ago in our parlor. I had to pack him off, saying he was even making Judy’s niggers tired.” She stopped and added with polite languor, “I suppose there’s no news up at yo’ house either? Everything’s going on as usual—and—you get yo’ California draft regularly?”

A good deal of the white of Julia’s beautiful eyes showed as she turned indignantly on the speaker. “I wish, cousin Sally, you’d just let up talking to me about that money. You know as well as I do that I allowed to maw I wouldn’t take a cent of it from the first! I might have had all the gowns and bonnets”—with a look at Miss Sally’s bows—“I wanted from her; she even offered to take me to St. Louis for a rig-out—if I’d been willing to take blood money. But I’d rather stick to this old sleazy mou’nin’ for Tom”—she gave a dramatic pluck at her faded black skirt—“than flaunt round in white muslins and China silks at ten dollars a yard, paid for by his murderer.”

“You know black’s yo’ color always,—taking in your height and complexion, Jule,” said Miss Sally demurely, yet not without a feminine consciousness that it really did set off her cousin’s graceful figure to perfection. “But you can’t keep up this gait always. You know some day you might come upon this Mr. Corbin.”

“He’d better not cross my path,” she said passionately.

“I’ve heard girls talk like that about a man and then get just green and yellow after him,” said Miss Sally critically. “But goodness me! speaking of meeting people reminds me I clean forgot to stop at the stage office and see about bringing over the new overseer. Lucky I met you, Jule! Good-by, dear. Come in to-night, and we’ll all go to the party together.” And with a little nod she ran off before her indignant cousin could frame a suitably crushing reply to her Parthian insinuation.

But at the stage office Miss Sally only wrote a few lines on a card, put it in an envelope, which she addressed to Mr. Joseph Corbin, and then seating herself with easy carelessness on a long packing-box, languidly summoned the proprietor.

“You’re always on hand yourself at Kirby station when the kyars come in to bring passengers to Pineville, Mr. Sledge?”

“Yes, Miss.”

“Yo’ haven’t brought any strangers over lately?”

“Well, last week Squire Farnham of Green Ridge—if he kin be called a stranger—as used to live in the very house yo father”—

“Yes, I know,” said Miss Sally, impatiently, “but if an ENTIRE stranger comes to take a seat for Pineville, you ask him if that’s his name,” handing the letter, “and give it to him if it is. And—Mr. Sledge—it’s nobody’s business but—yours and mine.”

“I understand, Miss Sally,” with a slow, paternal, tolerating wink. “He’ll get it, and nobody else, sure.”

“Thank you; I hope Mrs. Sledge is getting round again.”

“Pow’fully, Miss Sally.”

Having thus, as she hoped, stopped the arrival of the unhappy Corbin, Miss Sally returned home to consider the best means of finally disposing of him. She had insisted upon his stopping at Kirby and holding no communication with the Jeffcourts until he heard from her, and had strongly pointed out the hopeless infelicity of his plan. She dare not tell her Aunt Miranda, knowing that she would be too happy to precipitate an interview that would terminate disastrously to both the Jeffcourts and Corbin. She might have to take her father into her confidence,—a dreadful contingency.

She was dressed for the evening party, which was provincially early; indeed, it was scarcely past nine o’clock when she had finished her toilet, when there came a rap at her door. It was one of Mammy Judy’s children.

“Dey is a gemplum, Miss Sally.”

“Yes, yes,” said Miss Sally, impatiently, thinking only of her escort. “I’ll be there in a minute. Run away. He can wait.”

“And he said I was to guv yo’ dis yer,” continued the little negro with portentous gravity, presenting a card.

Miss Sally took it with a smile. It was a plain card on which was written with a pencil in a hand she hurriedly recognized, “Joseph Corbin.”

Miss Sally’s smile became hysterically rigid, and pushing the boy aside with a little cry, she darted along the veranda and entered the parlor from a side door and vestibule. To her momentary relief she saw that her friends had not yet arrived: a single figure—a stranger’s—rose as she entered.

Even in her consternation she had time to feel the added shock of disappointment. She had always present in her mind an ideal picture of this man whom she had never seen or even heard described. Joseph Corbin had been tall, dark, with flowing hair and long mustache. He had flashing fiery eyes which were capable of being subdued by a single glance of gentleness—her own. He was tempestuous, quick, and passionate, but in quarrel would be led by a smile. He was a combination of an Italian brigand and a poker player whom she had once met on a Mississippi steamboat. He would wear a broad-brimmed soft hat, a red shirt, showing his massive throat and neck—and high boots! Alas! the man before her was of medium height, with light close-cut hair, hollow cheeks that seemed to have been lately scraped with a razor, and light gray troubled eyes. A suit of cheap black, ill fitting, hastily acquired, and provincial even for Pineville, painfully set off these imperfections, to which a white cravat in a hopelessly tied bow was superadded. A terrible idea that this combination of a country undertaker and an ill-paid circuit preacher on probation was his best holiday tribute to her, and not a funeral offering to Mr. Jeffcourt, took possession of her. And when, with feminine quickness, she saw his eyes wander over her own fine clothes and festal figure, and sink again upon the floor in a kind of hopeless disappointment equal to her own, she felt ready to cry. But the more terrible sound of laughter approaching the house from the garden recalled her. Her friends were coming.

“For Heaven’s sake,” she broke out desperately, “didn’t you get my note at the station telling you not to come?”

His face grew darker, and then took up its look of hopeless resignation, as if this last misfortune was only an accepted part of his greater trouble, as he sat down again, and to Miss Sally’s horror, listlessly swung his hat to and fro under his chair.

“No,” he said, gloomily, “I didn’t go to no station. I walked here all the way from Shelbyville. I thought it might seem more like the square thing to her for me to do. I sent HIM by express ahead in the box. It’s been at the stage office all day.”

With a sickening conviction that she had been sitting on her cousin’s body while she wrote that ill-fated card, the young girl managed to gasp out impatiently: “But you must go—yes—go now, at once! Don’t talk now, but go.”

“I didn’t come here,” he said, rising with a kind of slow dignity, “to interfere with things I didn’t kalkilate to see,” glancing again at her dress, as the voices came nearer, “and that I ain’t in touch with,—but to know if you think I’d better bring him—or”—

He did not finish the sentence, for the door had opened suddenly, and a half-dozen laughing girls and their escorts burst into the room. But among them, a little haughty and still irritated from her last interview, was her cousin Julia Jeffcourt, erect and beautiful in a sombre silk.

“Go,” repeated Miss Sally, in an agonized whisper. “You must not be known here.”