John March, Southerner

He rode out alone upon the old turnpike and over the knoll where Suez still hopes some day to build the reservoir, and reached the spot where he and his young adjutant picked blackberries that first day we ever saw them. There he stopped, and looking across the land to the roofs of distant Rosemont, straightened up in the saddle with a great pride, and then, all at once, let go a long groan of anguish and, covering his face, heaved with sobs that seemed as though each tore a separate way up from his heart. Then, as suddenly, he turned his horse's head and rode slowly back. Twice, as he went, he handled something in the pocket of his coat's skirt, and the third time drew it out – a small repeater. He did not raise the weapon; he only looked down at it in his trembling hand, the old thimbles still in the three discharged chambers, the lead peeping from the other two, and, thinking of the woman who shared his ruin, said in his mind, "One for each of us."

But it never happened so. He often wishes, yet, that it had, although he is, and has been for years, a "platform star;" "the eloquent Southern orator, moralist and humorist" – yes, that's the self-same man. He's booked for the Y. M. C. A. lecture course in your own town this season. His lecture, entitled "Temptation and How to Conquer It," is said to be "a wonderful alternation of humorous and pathetic anecdotes, illustrative, instructive and pat." I have his circular. His wife travels with him. They generally put up at hotels; tried private hospitality the first season, but it didn't work, somehow.

They have never revisited Dixie; and only once in all these years have they seen a group of Suez faces. But a season or two ago – I think it was ninety-three – in Fourteenth Street, New York, wife and I came square upon Captain Charlie Champion, whom I had not seen for years, indeed, not since his marriage, and whom my wife, never having been in Suez, did not know. Still he would have us up to dinner at his hotel with Mrs. Champion. He promised me I should find her "just as good and sweet and saane as of old, and evm prettieh!" Plainly the hearty Captain was more a man than ever, and she had made him so! He told us we should meet Colonel Ravenel and also – by pure good luck! – Mr. and Mrs. Henry Fair. You may be sure we were glad to go.

Ravenel had to send us word from the rotunda begging us to go in to dinner without him and let him join us at table. Champion neglected his soup, telling us of two or three Suez people. "Pettigrew? – O he left Suez the year Rosemont chaanged haynds. Po' Shot! – he's ow jail-keepeh, now, you know – he says one day, s'e, 'Old Pettie may be in heavm by now, but I don't believe he's happy; he'll neveh get oveh the loss of his sla-aves!'"

Fair spoke of John March, saying his influence in that region was not only very strong but very fine. Whereto Champion responded,

" – Result is we've got a betteh town and a long sight betteh risin' generation than we eveh had befo'. I don't reckon Mr. Fair thinks we do the dahkeys justice. John says we don't and I don't believe we do. When it comes to that, seh, where on earth does the under man get all his rights? But we come neareh toe it in the three counties than anywheres else in Dixie, and that I know."

I dropped an interrogative hint as to how March stood with Ravenel.

The Captain smiled. "They neveh cla-ash. Ravenel's the same mystery he always was, but not the same poweh; his losin' Garnet the way he did, and then John bein' so totally diffe'nt, you know – John don't ofm ask Jeff-Jack to do anything, but he neveh aasks in vaain. – John's motheh? Yes, she still lives with him. – No, she ve'y seldom eveh writes much poetry any mo', since heh book turned out to be such a' unaccountable faailu'e. She jest lives with him, and really" – he dropped his voice – "you'd be amaazed to see how much she's sort o' sweetened and mellered under the influence of – Ah! there's Colonel Ravenel – "

He broke off with a whisper of surprise. At a table near the door Garnet's wife sat smiling eagerly after her husband as if it was at her instigation he had risen and effusively accosted Ravenel; and both she and Garnet knew that we all saw, when Ravenel said with an unmoved face and colorless voice,

"No. No, I'm perfectly sure I never saw you before, sir." It may have been wholly by chance, but in drawing a handkerchief as he spoke he showed the hand whose thumb he had lost in saving Garnet's life.

The "star" hurried back to his seat and resumed conversation with the partner of his fate – for a moment. But all at once she rose and went out, he following, leaving their meal untouched.

Wife, as it was right she should, fell in love with Mrs. Fair on the spot, and agreed with me by stolen glances I knew how to interpret, that she was as lovely and refined a woman as she had ever met. Boston had not removed that odd, winning drawl so common in the South, and which a Southerner learns to miss so in the East. But when wife tried to have her talk about Suez and its environs she looked puzzled for an instant and then, with a light of mild amusement in her smile, said,

"O! – I never saw Suez; I was born and brought up in Chicago."

"No," said Ravenel, "it's Mrs. Champion who can tell you all about Suez."

"That's so!" cried Champion, and turning to his wife, added, "What the Saltehs don't know about Suez ain't wuth knowin', is it, Mahtha?"

That night I told wife this whole story. As I reached this point in it she interposed a strong insinuation that I am a very poor story-teller.

"I thought," she continued, "I thought I had heard you speak of John March as a married man, father of vast numbers of children."

To the last clause I objected and she modified it. "But, anyhow, you leave too much to be inferred. I want to know what Garnet's fatal secret was; and – well, I don't care especially what became of the commercial traveler, but I do want to hear a little about Barbara! Did she marry the drummer?"

I said no, apologized for my vagueness and finished, in effect, thus:

Before Barbara came down-stairs, at Rosemont, that day, to see Mr. March, she sent him Leggett's letter. Cornelius had caught scent of the facts in it from Uncle Leviticus's traditions and had found them in the county archives, which he had early learned the trick of exploring. The two Ezra Jaspers, cousins, one the grantee of Widewood, the other of Suez, had had, each, a generous ambition to found a college. He of Suez – the town that was to be – selected for his prospective seat of learning a parcel of sixty acres close against the western line of Widewood. Whereupon the grantee of Widewood good-naturedly, as well as more wisely, "took up" near the Suez tract the sixty acres which eventually became Rosemont. Both pieces lay on the same side of the same creek and were both in Clearwater County, as was much, though not the most, of Widewood. Moreover, both were in the same "section" and "range," and in their whole description differed scarcely more than by an N and an S, one being in the northwest and the other in the southwest corner of the same township. On the ill-kept county records these twin college sites early got mixed. When Garnet founded Rosemont his friends in office promised to tax that public benefaction as gently as they dared, and he was only grateful and silent, not surprised, when his tax-bill showed no increase at all. But while Rosemont was still small and poor and he seriously embarrassed by the cost of an unsuccessful election, came this letter of Leggett's to open his eyes and complete his despair. There across it were his own pencilings of volume and page to show that he had seen the record. In one of his mad moments, and in the hopeful conviction that the mulatto would soon get himself shot or hung, he paid him to keep still. From that time on, making Leggett's silence just a little more golden than his speech, he had, "in bad faith," as the lawyers say, been pouring all his gains, not worse spent, into property built on land belonging to the Widewood estate; that is, into Rosemont. When Judge March found his Clearwater taxes high, he was only glad to see any of his lands growing in value. When John came into possession, Garnet, his party being once more in power, had cunningly arranged for Rosemont not to be taxed on its improvements, but only on its land, and March discovered nothing. In the land boom Garnet kept the odd sixty acres, generally supposed to be a part of Widewood, out of sight, and induced John to deed it to his mother. But when John came back from Europe landless, there arose the new risk that he might persuade her to sell the odd sixty acres, and, on looking into the records to get its description, find himself and his mother the legal owners of Rosemont.

"That's why the villain was so anxious to marry her!" said John to himself audibly as he paced up and down in the Rosemont parlor.

"Mr. March," said Barbara's slow voice. She had entered as she spoke.

"Miss – Miss Garnet!"

"Please be seated." There was a tempest in her heart, but her words were measured and low. "You were very kind to come." She dragged her short sentences and at the same time crowded them upon each other as if afraid to let him speak. He sat, a goodly picture of deferential attention, starving to see again her old-time gaze; but she kept her eyes on the floor. "Mr. March, of course – of course, this is terrible to – me. I only say it because I don't want to seem heartless to – others – when I tell you I thank God – O please don't speak yet, sir" – her hands trembled – "I thank God this thing has come to light. For my dear father's own sake I am glad, gladder than I can tell, that he has lost Rosemont. The loss may save him. But I'm glad, too, Mr. March, that it's come to you – please hear me – and to your mother. Of course I know your lost Widewood isn't all here; but so much of it is. I wish – "

March stopped her with a gesture. "I will not – O I cannot – hear any more! I'm ashamed to have let you say so much! Rosemont is yours and shall stay yours! That's what I came to say. Two properties were exchanged by accident when each was about as near worthless as the other, and your mother's family and my father's have lived up to the mistake and have stood by it for three generations. I will not take it! My mother will not! She renounced it this morning! Do you understand?"

Barbara gave a start of pain and murmured, "I do." Her heart burned with the knowledge that he was waiting for her uplifted glance. He began again.

"The true value of Rosemont never came out of Widewood. It's the coined wealth of your mother's character and yours!" He ceased in a sudden rage of love as he saw the colors of the rose deepen slowly on the beautiful, half-averted face, and then, for very trepidation, hurried on. "O understand me, I will not be robbed! Major Garnet cannot have Rosemont. But no one shall ever know I have not bought it of him. And it shall first be yours; yours in law and trade as it is now in right. Then, if you will, you, who have been its spirit and soul, shall keep it and be so still. But if you will not, then we, my mother and I, will buy it of you at a fair price. For, Miss – Miss – "

"Barb – " she murmured.

"O thank you!" cried he. "A thousand times! And a thousand times I promise you I'll never misunderstand you again! But hem! – to return to the subject; Miss Barb – I – O well, I was going to add merely that – that, eh – I – hem! – that, eh – O – However!" She raised her eyes and he turned crimson as he stammered, "I – I – I've forgotten what I was going to say!"

"I can neither keep Rosemont nor sell it, Mr. March. It's yours. It's yours every way. It's yours in the public wish; my father told me so last night. And there's a poetic justice – "

"Poetic – O!"

"Mr. March, didn't we once agree that God gives us our lives in the rough for us to shape them into poetry – that it's poetry, whether sad or gay, that makes alive – and that it's only the prose that kills?"

"Oh! do you remember that?"

"Yes." Her eyes fell again. "It was the time you asked me to use your first name."

"O! Miss Barb, are you still going to hold that against me?"

"Rosemont should be yours, Mr. March. It rhymes!" She stood up.

"No! No, no! I give it to you!" he said, springing to his feet.

"Will you, really, Mr. March?" She moved a step toward the door.

"O Miss Barb, I do! I do!"

"But your mother's consent – "

A pang of incertitude troubled his brave face for an instant, but then he said, "Oh, there can be no doubt! Let me go and get it!" He started.

"No," she falteringly said, "don't do it."

"Yes! Yes! Say yes! Tell me to go!" He caught her hand beseechingly. As their eyes gazed into each other's, hers suddenly filled and fell.

"Go," was her one soft word. But as he reached the door another stopped him:

"John – "

He turned and stood trembling from head to foot, his brow fretted with an agony of doubt. "Oh, Barbara Garnet!" he cried, "why did you say that?"

"Johanna told me," she murmured, smiling through her tears.

He started with half-lifted arms, but stopped, turned, and with a hand on his brow, sighed, "My mother!"

But a touch rested on his arm and a voice that was never in life to be strange to him again said, "If you don't say 'our mother,' I won't call you John any – "

Oh! Oh! Oh! men are so rough sometimes!

THE END