The Purchase Price Part 18

"You've not been much among women," she said.

"Very little."

"You don't understand them."

"I don't reckon anybody does."

"Jeanne told me that she heard, last night, a child crying, here in this house."

"Could it not have been a negro child?" He smiled at her, even as he stood under inquisition.

She noticed that his face now seemed pale. The bones of the cheeks stood out more now. He showed more gravity. Freed of his red fighting flush, the, flame of pa.s.sion gone out of his eyes, he seemed more dignified, more of a man than had hitherto been apparent to her.

"_Non_! _Non_!" cried out Jeanne, who had benefited unnoticed to an extent undreamed hitherto in her experience in matter delicate between man and maid. Her mistress raised a hand. She herself had almost forgotten that Jeanne was in the room. "_Non_! _Non_!"

reiterated that young person. "Eet was no neegaire child, _pas de tout, jamais de la vie_! I know those neegaire voice. It was a voice white, Madame, Monsieur! Apparently it wept. Perhaps it had hunger."

A sort of grim uncovering of his teeth was Dunwody's smile. He made no comment. His face was whiter than before.

"Whose child was it?" demanded Josephine, motioning to the garments he still held in his hands. "Hers?" He shook his head slowly.

"No."

"Yours?"

"No."

"Oh, well, I suppose it was some servant's--though the overseer, Jeanne says, lives across the fields, there. And there would not be any negroes living here in the house, in any case?"

"No."

"Was it--was it--yours?"

"I have no child. There will never be any for me in the world--except--under--" But now the flush came back into his face.

Confused, he turned, and gently laid down the faded silks across a chair back, pulling it even with the one where lay Josephine's richer and more modern robes. He looked at the two grimly, sadly, shook his head and walked out of the room.

"Madame!" exclaimed Jeanne, "it was divine! But, _quelle mystere_!"

CHAPTER XIII

THE INVASION

Dunwody joined Jamieson below, and the latter now called for his horse, the two walking together toward the door. They hardly had reached the gallery when there became audible the sound of hoof-beats rapidly approaching up the road across the lawn. A party of four hors.e.m.e.n appeared, all riding hard.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A party of four hors.e.m.e.n appeared.]

"Who're they?" inquired the doctor. "Didn't see any of them on the road as I came in."

"They look familiar," commented Dunwody. "That's Jones, and that's Judge Clayton, down below--why, I just left both of them on the boat the other day! It's Desha and Yates with them, from the other side of the county. There must be something up."

He advanced to meet the visitors. "Good morning, gentlemen. Light down, and come in."

All four got down, shook hands with Dunwody, gave their reins to servants, and joined him on his invitation to enter. Jamieson was known to all of them.

"Well, Colonel Dunwody," began the Honorable William Jones, "you didn't expect to see us so soon, did you? Reckon you'd ought to be all the gladder.

"You live here, my dear Colonel," he continued, looking about him, "in much the same state and seclusion remarked by Mr. Gibbon in his immortal work on the _Decline and Fall of Rome_--where he described the castles of them ancient days, located back in the mountainous regions. But it ain't no Roman road you've got, out thar."

"I was going to remark," interrupted Judge Clayton, "that Colonel Dunwody has antic.i.p.ated all the modern requirements of hospitality as well as embodied all those of ancient sort. Thank you, I shall taste your bourbon, Colonel, with gladness. It is a long ride in from the river; but, following out our friend's thought, why do you live away back in here, when all your best plantations are down below? We don't see you twice a year, any more."

"Well," said the owner of Tallwoods, "my father might be better able to answer that question if he were alive. He built this for a summer place, and I use it all the year. I found the place here, and it always seemed too big to move away. We set three meals a day, even back here in the hills, and there's quite a bunch of leaves we can put on the table. The only drawback is, we don't see much company. I'm mighty glad to see you, and I'm going to keep you here now, until--"

"Until something pops open," remarked the Honorable William, over the rim of his gla.s.s. Dunwody's neighbors nodded also.

Their host looked at them for a moment. "Are you here on any special errand--but of course there must be something of the sort, to bring you two gentlemen so close on my trail."

"We met up with these gentlemen down at the river," began Yates, "and from what they done told us, we thought we'd all better ride in along together, and have a little talk with you. Looks like there might be trouble in these parts before long."

"What sort of trouble?"

"It's this-a-way," broke in the Honorable William Jones. "The jedge an' I laid off at Cairo when you-all went on through. Next day, along comes a steamer from up-river, an' she's full of northern men, headed west; a d.a.m.ned sight more like a fightin' army than so many settlers. They're goin' out into the purairie country beyant, an' _I_ think it's just on the early-bird principle, to hold it ag'inst settlers from this state. They're a lot of those d.a.m.ned black abolitionists, that's what they are! What's more, that Lily gal of the jedge's here, she's got away agin--she turned up missin' at Cairo, too--an' she taken up with this bunch of Yankees, an' is mighty apt to git clar off."

Judge Clayton nodded gravely. "The whole North is stirred up and bound to make trouble. These men seem to have taken the girl in without hesitation. They don't intend to stand by any compromise, at least. The question is, what are we going to do about it? We can't stand here and see our property taken away by armed invaders, in this way. And yet--"

"It looks," he added slowly, a moment later, "just as Thomas Jefferson said long ago, as though this country had the wolf by the ear, and could neither hold it nor let it go. For myself--and setting aside this personal matter, which is at worst only the loss of a worthless girl--I admit I fear that this slavery wolf is going to mean trouble--big trouble--both for the South and the North, before long."

"Douglas, over there in Illinois, hasn't brought up anything in Congress yet that's stuck," broke in the ever-ready Jones. "Old Caroliny and Mississip'--them's the ones! Their conventions show where we're goin' to stand at. We'll let the wolf go, and take holt in a brand new place, that's exactly what we'll do!"

Dunwody remained silent for a time. Doctor Jamieson took snuff, and looked quietly from one to the other. "You can count me in, gentlemen," said he.

Silence fell as he went on. "If they mean fight, let them have fight. If we let in one army of abolitionists out here, to run off our property, another will follow. As soon as the railroad gets as far west as the Missouri River, they'll come out in swarms; and they will take that new country away from us. That's what they want.

"The South has been swindled all along the line," he exclaimed, rising and smiting a fist into a palm. "We got Texas, yes, but it had to be by war. We've been juggled out of California, which ought to have been a southern state. We don't want these deserts of Utah and New Mexico, for they won't raise cotton. When we try to get into Cuba, the North and all the rest of the world protests.

We are cut off from growth to the south by Mexico. On the west we have these Indians located. The whole upper West is air-tight abolitionist by national law. Now, where shall we go? These abolitionists are even wedging in west of us. This d.a.m.ned compromise line ought to be cut off the map. We ought to have a chance to grow!"

Strange enough such speech sounds to-day,--speech demanding growth for a part of a country, denying it for the whole, speech ignoring the nationalist tendency so soon to overwhelm all bounds, all creeds in the making of a mighty America that should be a home for all the nations. But as the gray-headed old doctor went on he only voiced what was the earnest conviction of many of the ablest men of his time, both of the South and the North.

"The South has been robbed. We paid our share of the cost of this last war, in blood and in money! We paid for our share in the new territory won for the Union! And now they deny us any share of it!

A little band of ranters, of fanatics, undertake to tell a great country what it shall do, what it shall think,--no matter even if that is against our own interests and against our traditions!

Gentlemen, it's invasion, that's what it is, and that's my answer, so far as my honest conscience and all my wisdom go. It's war!

What's the next thing to do? Judge, we can take back your girl--the legal right to do that is clean. But we all know that that may be only a beginning."

"To me, sir," ventured Judge Clayton, "the legal side of this is very clear, leaving aside our right to recover my property. They are trying to shove their fanatical beliefs down our throats with rifle barrels. We never used to stand that sort of thing down here. I don't think we will begin it now!"

The Honorable William Jones helped himself to whisky, altogether forgetting his principle of taking but one drink a day. "If them d.a.m.ned abolitionists would only stay at home, we could afford to sit quiet an' let 'em howl; but when they come into our dooryard an' begin to howl, it's time somethin' ought to be did. I 'low we'll have to fight."