Jupiter Lights

The hymn finished, Miss Sabrina put her prayer-book in her pocket, and came forward. “My mother,” she said, touching one of the tombs. “My grandfather and grandmother. My brother Marmaduke, Cicely’s father. Cicely’s mother; she was a Northerner, and we have sometimes thought Cicely rather Northern.”

“Oh, no!”

“Well, her grandmother was from Guadeloupe. So perhaps that balances it.”

The older tombs were built of brick, each one covered with a heavy marble slab, upon which were inscribed, in stately old-fashioned language, and with old-fashioned arrangement of lines and capitals, the names, the virtues, and the talents of the one who lay beneath. The later graves were simple grassy mounds.

“My brother Augustus; my great-uncle William Drayton; my aunt Pamela,” Miss Sabrina continued, indicating each tomb as she named its occupant, much as though she were introducing them. “My own place is already selected; it is here,” she went on, tapping a spot with her slender foot. “It seems to me a good place; don’t you think so? And I keep an envelope, with directions for everything, on top of my collars, where any one can find it; for I do so dislike an ill-arranged funeral. For instance, I particularly desire that there should be fresh water and glasses on the hall-table, where every one can get them without asking; so much better than hidden in some back room, with every one whispering and hunting about after them. I trust you don’t mind my saying,” she concluded, looking at Eve kindly, “that I hope you may be here.”

They left the cemetery together.

“I suppose it was a shock to you that your niece should marry a Union officer?” Eve said, as they took the shorter path towards the house.

“Ye-es, I cannot deny it; and to my father also. But we liked John for himself very much; and Cicely felt – ”

But John’s sister did not care to hear what Cicely felt! “And was it on this island that he expected to make his fortune – in cotton?”

“No; these are rice lands, and they are worthless now that the dikes are down.”

“And the slaves gone.”

“Yes. But we never had many slaves; we were never rich. Now we are very poor, my dear; I don’t know that any one has mentioned it to you.”

“And yet you keep on all these infirm old negroes – those who would be unable to get employment anywhere else.”

“Oh, we should never turn away our old servants,” replied Miss Sabrina, with confidence.

That evening, at the judge’s suggestion, Cicely took her guitar. “What do you want me to sing, grandpa?”

“‘Sweet Afton.’”

So Cicely sang it. Then the judge himself sang, to Cicely’s accompaniment, “They may rail at this life.” He had made a modest bowl of punch: it was Christmas night, and every one should be merry. So he sang, in his gallant old voice:

“‘They may rail at this life; from the hour I began itI’ve found it a life full of kindness and bliss;And until they can show me some happier planet,More social, more gay, I’ll content me with this.’”

He was contented with it – this life “full of kindness and bliss,” on his lonely sea-island, with its broken dikes and desolated fields, in his half-ruined old house, with its wooden walls vibrating, with more than one pane of glass gone, more than one floor whose planks were loosened so that they must walk carefully. At any rate, he trolled out his song as though he were: it was Christmas night, and every one should be merry.

There was one person who really was merry, and that was Master Jack, who sat on the lap of his Northern aunt, laughing and crowing, and demanding recognition of his important presence from each in turn, by the despotic power of his eye. In truth, it was this little child who held together the somewhat strangely assorted group, Miss Sabrina in an ancient white lace cape, with flowers in her hair; the old judge in a dress-coat and ruffled shirt, Cicely in a gay little gown of light-blue tint (taken probably, so Eve thought, from her second trousseau), and Eve herself in her heavy black crape; she alone had made no concessions to Christmas; her mourning attire was unlightened by any color, or even by white.

“‘Macgregor’s Gathering,’” called the judge.

Cicely sang it. After finishing the song, she began the lament a second time, changing the words:

“We’re niggerless, niggerless, niggerless, Gregorlach!Niggerless, niggerless, nig-ig-ig-gerless!”

she sang. “For we’re not ‘landless’ at all; we’ve got miles and miles of land. It’s niggers that are lacking.”

The judge laughed, patting her little dark head as she sat on a stool beside him. “Let us go out to the quarters, grandpa; they will be dancing by now. And Jack must go too.”

The judge lifted his great-grandson to his shoulder. Eve had already noticed that Cicely never took the child from her with her own hands; she let some one else do it. When the door was opened, distant sounds of the thrumming of banjoes could be heard. Seeing a possible intention on Eve’s face, Cicely remarked, in her impersonal way, “Are you coming? They won’t enjoy it, they are afraid of you.”

“I don’t see why they should be,” said Eve, when she and Miss Sabrina were left alone.

“You are a stranger, my dear; it is only that. And they are all so fond of Cicely that it wouldn’t be Christmas to them if she did not pay them a visit; they worship her.”

“And after she has sung that song!”

“That song?”

“‘Niggerless,’” quoted Eve, indignantly.

“Well, we are niggerless, or nearly so,” said Miss Sabrina, mystified.

“It’s the word, the term.”

“Oh, you mean nigger? It is very natural to us to say so. I suppose you prefer negroes? If you like, I will try to call them so hereafter. Negroes; yes, negroes.” She pronounced it “nig-roes.” “I don’t know whether I have told you,” she went on, “how much Cicely dislikes dreams?”

“Well she may!” was the thought of Jack Bruce’s sister. What she said, with a short laugh, was, “You had better tell her to be careful about eating hot breads.”

“Would you have her eat cold bread?” said Miss Sabina, in surprise. “I didn’t mean that her nights were disturbed; I only meant that she dislikes the telling of dreams – a habit so common at breakfast, you know. I thought I would just mention it.”

Eve gave another abrupt laugh. “Do you fear I am going to tell her mine? She would not find them all of sugar.”

“I did not mean yours especially. She has such a curious way of shutting her teeth when people begin – such pretty little white teeth as they are, too, dear child! And she doesn’t like reading aloud either.”

“That must be a deprivation to you,” said Eve, her tone more kindly.

“It is. I have always been extremely fond of it. Are you familiar with Milton? His ‘Comus’?”

“‘Sabrina fair, listen where thou art sitting?” quoted Eve, smiling.

“Yes.

”‘Sabrina fair, listen where thou art sitting,Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,In twisted braids of lilies knitting – ’”

said the Southern lady in her murmurous voice. “You don’t know what a pleasure it has always been to me that I am named Sabrina. The English originated ‘Comus;’ I like the English, they are so cultivated.”

“Do you see many of them here?”

“Not many. I am sorry to say my father does not like them; he thinks them affected.”

“That is the last thing I should call them.”

“Well, those who come here really do say ‘serpents’ and ’crocodiles.’”

“Do you mean as an oath?” said Eve, thinking vaguely of “Donner und blitzen.”

“As an oath? I have never heard it used in that way,” answered Miss Sabrina, astonished. “I mean that they call the snakes serpents, and the alligators crocodiles; my father thinks that so very affected.”

Thus the wan-cheeked mistress of Romney endeavored to entertain their guest.

That night Eve was sitting by her fire. The mattress of Meadows was no longer on the floor; the English girl had started on her return journey the day before, escorted to the pier by all the blacks of the island, respectful and wondering. The presence of little Jack asleep in his crib behind a screen, with Dilsey on her pallet beside him, made the large wind-swept chamber less lonely; still its occupant felt overwhelmed with gloom. There was a light tap at the door, and Cicely entered; she had taken off her gay blue frock, and wore a white dressing-gown. “I thought I’d see if you were up.” She went across and looked at Jack for a moment; then she came back to the fire. “You haven’t touched your hair, nor unbuttoned a button; are you always like that?”

“Like what?”

“Trim and taut, like a person going out on horse-back. I should love to see you with your hair down; I should love to see you run and shriek!”

“I fear you are not likely to see either.”

Cicely brought her little teeth together with a click. “I’ve got to get something over in the north wing; will you come? The wind blows so, it’s splendid!”

“I will go if you wish,” said Eve.

They went down the corridor and turned into another, both of them lighted by the streaks of moonlight which came through the half-closed or broken shutters; the moon was nearly at its full, and very brilliant; a high wind was careering by outside – it cried at the corner of the house like a banshee. At the end of the second hall Cicely led the way through a labyrinth of small dark chambers, now up a step, now down a step, hither and thither; finally opening a door, she ushered Eve into a long, high room, lighted on both sides by a double row of windows, one above the other. Here there were no shutters, and the moonlight poured in, making the empty space, with its white walls and white floor, as light as day. “It’s the old ballroom,” said Cicely. “Wait here; I will be back in a moment.” She was off like a flash, disappearing through a far door.

Eve waited, perforce. If she had felt sure that she could find her way back to her room, she would have gone; but she did not feel sure. As to leaving Cicely alone in that remote and disused part of the house, at that late hour of the night, she cared nothing for that; Eve was hard with people she did not like; she did not realize herself how hard she was. She went to one of the windows and looked out.

These lower windows opened on a long veranda. The veranda was only a foot above the ground; any one, Eve reflected, could cross its uneven surface and look in; she almost expected to see some one cross, and peer in at her, his face opposite hers on the other side of the pane. The moonlight shone on the swaying evergreens; within sight were the waters of the Sound. Presently she became conscious of a current of wind blowing through the room, and turned to see what caused it. There had been no sound of an opening door, or any other sound, but a figure was approaching, coming down the moonlit space rapidly with a waving motion. It was covered with something transparent that glittered and shone; its outlines were vague. It came nearer and nearer, without a sound. Then a mass of silvery gauze was thrown back, revealing Cicely attired in an old-fashioned ball dress made of lace interwoven with silver threads and decked with little silvery stars; there was a silver belt high up under her arms, and a wreath of the silvery stars shone in her hair. She stood a moment; then snatching up the gauze which had fallen at her feet, she held one end of it, and let the other blow out on the strong cold wind which now filled the room. With this cloudy streamer in her hand, she began lightly and noiselessly to dance, moving over the moonlit floor, now with the gauze blowing out in front of her, now waving behind her as she flew along. Suddenly she let it drop, and, coming to Eve, put her arms round her waist and forced her forward. Eve resisted. But Cicely’s hands were strong, her hold tenacious; she drew her sister-in-law down the room in a wild gallopade. In the midst of it, giving a little jump, she seized Eve’s comb. Eve’s hair, already loosened, fell down on her shoulders. Cicely clapped her hands, and began to take little dancing steps to the tune of “Niggerless, niggerless, nig-ig-ig-gerless!” chanted in a silvery voice. When she came to “less,” she held out her gleaming skirt, and dipped down in a wild little courtesy.

Eve picked up her comb and turned back towards the door.

Cicely danced on ahead, humming her song; they passed through the labyrinth of dark little rooms, the glimmering dress acting as guide through the dimness. Cicely went as far as the second hall; here she stopped.

“It’s the wind, you know,” she said, in her usual voice; “when it blows like this, I always have to do something; sometimes I call out and shout. But I don’t care for it, really; I don’t care for anything!” Her face, as she spoke, looked set and melancholy. She opened a door and disappeared.

The next day there was nothing in her expression to indicate that there had been another dance at Romney the night before, besides the one at the negro quarters.

Eve was puzzled. She had thought her so unimaginative and quiet; “a passionless, practical little creature, cool and unimpulsive, whose miniature beauty led poor Jack astray, and made him believe that she had a soul!” This had been her estimate. She was alone with the baby; she took him to the window and looked at him earnestly. The little man smiled back at her, playing with the crape of her dress. No, there was nothing of Cicely here; the blue eyes, golden hair, and frank smile – all were his father over again.

“We’ll make that Mr. Morrison come back, baby; and then you and I will go away together,” she whispered, stroking his curls.

“Meh Kiss’m,” said Jack. It was as near as he could come to “Merry Christmas.”

“Before another Christmas I’ll get you away from her forever!” murmured the aunt, passionately.

V

“OUT rowing? If you are doing it to entertain me – ” said Eve.

“I should never think of that; there’s only one thing here that entertains you, and that’s baby,” Cicely answered. She spoke without insistence; her eyes had their absent-minded expression.

“Cicely, give him to me,” Eve began. She must put her wish into words some time. “If I could only make you feel how much I long for it! I will devote my life to him; and it will be a pleasure to me, a charity, because I am so alone in the world. You are not alone; you have other ties. Listen, Cicely, I will make any arrangement you like; you shall always have the first authority, but let me have him to live with me; let me take him away when I go. I will even acknowledge everything you have said: my brother was much older than you were; it’s natural that those months with him should seem to you now but an episode – something that happened at the beginning of your life, but which need not go on to its close.”

“I was young,” said Cicely, musingly.

“Young to marry – yes.”

“No; I mean young to have everything ended.”

“But that is what I am telling you, it must not be ended; Mr. Morrison must come back to you.”

“He may,” answered Cicely, looking at her companion for a moment with almost a solemn expression.

“Then give baby to me now, and let me go away – before he comes.”

Cicely glanced off over the water; they were standing on the low bank above the Sound. “He could not go north now, in the middle of the winter,” she answered, after a moment.

“In the early spring, then?”

“I don’t know; perhaps.”

Eve’s heart gave a bound. She was going to gain her point.

Having been brought up by a man, she had learned to do without the explanations, the details, which are dear to most feminine minds; so all she said was, “That’s agreed, then.” She was so happy that a bright flush rose in her cheeks, and her smile, as she spoke these last few words, was very sweet; those lips, which Miss Sabrina had thought so sullen, had other expressions.

Cicely looked at her. “You may marry too.”

Eve laughed. “There is no danger. To show you, to make you feel as secure as I do, I will tell you that there have been one or two – friends of Jack’s over there. Apparently I am not made of inflammable material.”

“When you are sullen – perhaps not. But when you are as you are now?”

“I shall always be sullen to that sort of thing. But we needn’t be troubled; there won’t be an army! To begin with, I am twenty-eight; and to end with, every one will know that I have willed my property to baby; and that makes an immense difference.”

“How does it make a difference?”

“In opportunities for marrying, if not also – as I really believe – for falling in love.”

“I don’t see what difference it makes.”

“True, you do not,” Eve replied; “you are the most extraordinary people in the world, you Southerners; I have been here nearly a month, and I am still constantly struck by it – you never think of money at all. And the strangest point is, that although you never think of it, you don’t in the least know how to get on without it; you cannot improve anything, you can only endure.”

“If you will tell Dilsey to get baby ready, I will see to the boat,” answered Cicely. She was never interested in general questions.

Presently they were afloat. They were in a large row-boat, with Pomp, Plato, Uncle Abram, and a field hand at the oars; Cicely steered; Eve and little Jack were the passengers. The home-island was four miles long, washed by the ocean on one side, the Sound on the other; on the north, Singleton Island lay very near; but on the south there was a broad opening, the next island being six miles distant. Here stood Jupiter Light; this channel was a sea-entrance not only to the line of Sounds, but also to towns far inland, for here opened on the west a great river-mouth, through which flowed to the sea a broad, slow stream coming from the cotton country. They were all good sailors, as they had need to be for such excursions, the Sounds being often rough. The bright winter air, too, was sharp; but Eve was strong, and did not mind it, and the ladies of Romney, like true Southerners, never believed that it was really cold, cold as it is at the North. The voyages in the row-boat had been many; they had helped to fill the days, and the sisters-in-law had had not much else with which to fill them; they had remained as widely apart as in the beginning, Eve absorbed in her own plans, Cicely in her own indifference. Little Jack was always of the party, as his presence made dialogue easy. They had floated many times through the salt marshes between the rattling reeds, they had landed upon other islands, whose fields, like those of Romney, had once been fertile, but which now showed submerged expanses behind the broken dikes, with here and there an abandoned rice-mill. Sometimes they went inland up the river, rowing slowly against the current; sometimes, when it was calm, they went out to sea. To-day they crossed to the other side of the Sound.

“What a long house Romney is!” said Eve, looking back. She did not add, “And if you drop anything on the floor at one end it shakes the other.”

“Yes, it’s large,” Cicely answered. She perceived no fault in it.

“And the name; you know there’s a Romney in Kent?”

“Is there?”

“And your post-office, too; when I think of your Warwick, with its one wooden house, those spectral white sand-hills, the wind, and the tall light-house, and then when I recall the English Warwick, with its small, closely built streets, and the great castle looking down into the river Avon, I wonder if the first-comers here didn’t feel lost sometimes. All the rivers in central England, put together, would be drowned out of sight in that great yellow stream of yours over there.”

But Cicely’s imagination took no flight towards the first-comers, nor towards the English rivers; and, in another moment, Eve’s had come hastily homeward, for little Jack coughed. “He is taking cold!” she exclaimed. “Let us go back.”

“It’s a splendid day; he will take no cold,” Cicely answered. “But we will go back if you wish.” She watched Eve fold a shawl round the little boy. “You ought to have a child of your own, Eve,” she said, with her odd little laugh.

“And you ought never to have had one,” Eve responded.

As they drew near the landing, they perceived Miss Sabrina on the bank. “She has on her bonnet! Where can she be going?” said Cicely. “Oh, I know; she will ask you to row to Singleton Island, to return Mrs. Singleton’s call.”

“But Jack looks so pale – ”

“You’re too funny, Eve! How do you suppose we have taken care of him all this time – before you came?” Eve’s tone was often abrupt, but Cicely’s was never that; the worst you could say of it was that its sweetness was sometimes mocking.

When they reached the landing, Miss Sabrina proposed her visit; “that is, if you care to go, my dear. Dilsey told me that she saw you coming back, so I put on my bonnet on the chance.”

“Eve is going,” remarked Cicely, stepping from the boat; “she wants to see Rupert, he is such a sweet little boy.”

Dilsey took Jack, and presently Miss Sabrina and her guest were floating northward. Eve longed to put her triumph into words: “The baby is mine! In the spring I am to have him.” But she refrained. “When does your spring begin?” she asked. “In February?”

“In March, rather,” answered Miss Sabrina. “Before that it is dangerous to make changes; I myself have never been one to put on thin dresses with the pinguiculas.”

“What are pinguiculas? – Birds?”

“They are flowers,” responded Miss Sabrina, mildly.

“It will be six weeks, then; to-day is the fifteenth.”

“Six weeks to what?”

“To March; to spring.”

“I don’t know that it begins on the very first day,” remarked Miss Sabrina.

“Mine shall!” thought Eve.

Romney was near the northern end of the home-island; the voyage, therefore, was a short one. The chimneys of Singleton House came into view; but the boat passed on, still going northward. “Isn’t that the house?” Eve asked.

“Yes, but the landing is farther on; we always go to the landing, and then walk back through the avenue.”

But when the facade appeared at the end of the neglected road – a walk of fifteen minutes – there seemed to Eve hardly occasion for so much ceremony; the old mansion was in a worse condition than Romney; it sidled and leaned, and one of its wings was a roofless ruin, with the planking of the floor half tilted up, half fallen into the cellar. Miss Sabrina betrayed no perception of the effect of this upon a stranger; she crossed the veranda with her lady-like step, and said to a solemn little negro boy who was standing in the doorway: “Is Mrs. Singleton at home this evening, Boliver? Can she see us? – Miss Bruce and Miss Abercrombie.”

An old negro woman came round the corner of the house, and, cuffing the boy for standing there, ushered the visitors into a room on the right of the broad hall. The afternoon had grown colder, but the doors and windows all stood open; a negro girl, who bore a strong resemblance to Powlyne, entered, and chased out a chicken who was prowling about over the matted floor; then she knelt down, with her long thin black legs stretched out behind, and tried to light a fire on the hearth. But the wind was evidently in the wrong direction for the requirements of that chimney; white smoke puffed into the room in clouds.

“Let us go out on the veranda,” suggested Eve, half choked.

“Oh, but surely – When they have ushered us in here?” responded Miss Sabrina, remonstratingly, though she too was nearly strangled. “It will blow away in a few minutes, I assure you.”

Much of it still remained when Mrs. Singleton entered. She paid no more attention to it than Miss Sabrina had done; she welcomed her guests warmly, kissing Eve on both cheeks, although she had never seen her before. “I have been so much interested in hearing that you are from England, Miss Bruce,” she said, taking a seat beside her. “We always think of England as our old home; I reckon you will see much down here to remind you of it.”

Eve looked about her – at the puffing smoke, at the wandering chicken, who still peered through one of the windows. “I am not English,” she said.

“But you have lived there so long; ever since you were a child; surely it is the same thing,” interposed Miss Sabrina. A faint color rose in her cheeks for a moment. Eve perceived that she preferred to present an English rather than a Northern guest.

“We are all English, if you come to that,” said Mrs. Singleton, confidently. She was small, white-haired, with a sweet face, and a sweet voice that drawled a little.