Sally Dows Read online

surprise, but no discomfiture, as he recognized her companion.

  "Oh, Mr. Champney," said Miss Sally plaintively, "I've lost my glovesomewhere near pooah Brooks's tomb in the hollow. Won't you go and fetchit, and come back here to take me home? The co'nnle has got to go andsee his sick niggers in the hospital." Champney lifted his hat, noddedgenially to Courtland, and disappeared below the cypresses on the slope."Yo' mustn't be mad," she said, turning in explanation to her companion,"but we have been here too long already, and it's better that I shouldbe seen coming home with him than yo'."

  "Then this sectional interference does not touch him?" said Courtlandbitterly.

  "No. He's an Englishman; his father was a known friend of theConfederacy, and bought their cotton bonds."

  She stopped, gazing into Courtland's face with a pretty vague impatienceand a slight pouting of her lip.

  "Co'nnle!"

  "Miss Sally."

  "Yo' say yo' had known me for three years before yo' saw me. Well, wemet once before we ever spoke to each other!"

  Courtland looked in her laughing eyes with admiring wonder. "When?" heasked.

  "The first day yo' came! Yo' moved the ladder when I was on the cornice,and I walked all ever yo' head. And, like a gentleman, yo' never said aword about it. I reckon I stood on yo' head for five minutes."

  "Not as long as that," said Courtland laughing, "if I remember rightly."

  "Yes," said Miss Sally with dancing eyes. "I, a So'th'n girl, actuallyset my foot on the head of a No'th'n scum of a co'nnle! My!"

  "Let that satisfy your friends then."

  "No! I want to apologize. Sit down, co'nnle."

  "But, Miss Sally"--

  "Sit down, quick!"

  He did so, seating himself sideways on the bank. Miss Sally stood besidehim.

  "Take off yo' hat, sir."

  He obeyed smilingly. Miss Sally suddenly slipped behind him. He felt thesoft touch of her small hands on his shoulders; warm breath stirred theroots of his hair, and then--the light pressure on his scalp of whatseemed the lips of a child.

  He leaped to his feet, yet before he could turn completely round--adifficulty the young lady had evidently calculated upon--he was toolate! The floating draperies of the artful and shameless Miss Sally werealready disappearing among the tombs in the direction of the hollow.

  CHAPTER V.

  The house occupied by the manager of the Drummond Syndicate inRedlands--the former residence of a local lawyer and justice of thepeace--was not large, but had an imposing portico of wooden Doriccolumns, which extended to the roof and fronted the main street. Theall-pervading creeper closely covered it; the sidewalk before it wasshaded by a row of broad-leaved ailantus. The front room, with Frenchwindows opening on the portico, was used by Colonel Courtland as ageneral office; beyond this a sitting-room and dining-room overlookedthe old-fashioned garden with its detached kitchen and inevitable negrocabin. It was a close evening; there were dark clouds coming up in thedirection of the turnpike road, but the leaves of the ailantus hungheavy and motionless in the hush of an impending storm. The sparks oflazily floating fireflies softly expanded and went out in the gloom ofthe black foliage, or in the dark recesses of the office, whose windowswere widely open, and whose lights Courtland had extinguished when hebrought his armchair to the portico for coolness. One of these sparksbeyond the fence, although alternately glowing and paling, was still sopersistent and stationary that Courtland leaned forward to watch it moreclosely, at which it disappeared, and a voice from the street said:--

  "Is that you, Courtland?"

  "Yes. Come in, won't you?"

  The voice was Champney's, and the light was from his cigar. As heopened the gate and came slowly up the steps of the portico the usualhesitation of his manner seemed to have increased. A long sigh trilledthe limp leaves of the ailantus and as quickly subsided. A few heavyperpendicular raindrops crashed and spattered through the foliage likemolten lead.

  "You've just escaped the shower," said Courtland pleasantly. He had notseen Champney since they parted in the cemetery six weeks before.

  "Yes!--I--I thought I'd like to have a little talk with you, Courtland,"said Champney. He hesitated a moment before the proffered chair, andthen added, with a cautious glance towards the street, "Hadn't we bettergo inside?"

  "As you like. But you'll find it wofully hot. We're quite alone here;there's nobody in the house, and this shower will drive any loungersfrom the street." He was quite frank, although their relations to eachother in regard to Miss Sally were still so undefined as to scarcelyinvite his confidence.

  Howbeit Champney took the proffered chair and the glass of julep whichCourtland brought him.

  "You remember my speaking to you of Dumont?" he said hesitatingly, "MissDows' French cousin, you know? Well--he's coming here: he's got propertyhere--those three houses opposite the Court House. From what I hear,he's come over with a lot of new-fangled French ideas on the niggerquestion--rot about equality and fraternity, don't you know--and thehighest education and highest offices for them. You know what thefeeling is here already? You know what happened at the last election atCoolidgeville--how the whites wouldn't let the niggers go to the pollsand the jolly row that was kicked up over it? Well, it looks as if thatsort of thing might happen HERE, don't you know, if Miss Dows takes upthese ideas."

  "But I've reason to suppose--I mean," said Courtland correcting himselfwith some deliberation, "that any one who knows Miss Dows' opinionsknows that these are not her views. Why should she take them up?"

  "Because she takes HIM up," returned Champney hurriedly; "and evenif she didn't believe in them herself, she'd have to share theresponsibility with him in the eyes of every unreconstructed rowdy likeTom Higbee and the rest of them. They'd make short work of her niggersall the same."

  "But I don't see why she should be made responsible for the opinions ofher cousin, nor do I exactly knew what 'taking him up' means," returnedCourtland quietly.

  Champney moistened his dry lips with the julep and uttered a nervouslaugh. "Suppose we say her husband--for that's what his coming back heremeans. Everybody knows that; you would, too, if you ever talked with herabout anything but business."

  A bright flash of lightning that lit up the faces of the two men wouldhave revealed Champney's flushed features and Courtland's lack of colorhad they been looking at each other. But they were not, and the longreverberating crash of thunder which followed prevented any audiblereply from Courtland, and covered his agitation.

  For without fully accepting Champney's conclusions he was cruellyshocked at the young man's utterance of them. He had scrupulouslyrespected the wishes of Miss Sally and had faithfully--although neverhopelessly--held back any expression of his own love since theirconversation in the cemetery. But while his native truthfulness andsense of honor had overlooked the seeming insincerity of her attitudetowards Champney, he had never justified his own tacit participationin it, and the concealment of his own pretensions before his possiblerival. It was true that she had forbidden him to openly enter thelists with her admirers, but Champney's innocent assumption of hisindifference to her and his consequent half confidences added poignancyto his story. There seemed to be only one way to extricate himself,and that was by a quarrel. Whether he did or did not believe Champney'sstory, whether it was only the jealous exaggeration of a rival, orMiss Sally was actually deceiving them both, his position had becomeintolerable.

  "I must remind you, Champney," he said, with freezing deliberation,"that Miss Miranda Dows and her niece now represent the Drummond Companyequally with myself, and that you cannot expect me to listen to anyreflections upon the way they choose to administer their part in itsaffairs, either now, or to come. Still less do I care to discuss theidle gossip which can affect only the PRIVATE interests of these ladies,with which neither you nor I have any right to interfere."

  But the naivete of the young Englishman was as invincible as MissSally's own, and as fatal to Courtland's attitude. "Of course I haven'tany RIGHT, you
know," he said, calmly ignoring the severe preamble ofhis companion's speech, "but I say! hang it all! even if a fellow hasno chance HIMSELF, he don't like to see a girl throw herself and herproperty away on a man like that."

  "One moment, Champney," said Courtland, under the infection of hisguest's simplicity, abandoning his former superior attitude. "You sayyou have no chance. Do you want me to understand that you are regularlya suitor of Miss Dows?"

  "Y-e-e-s," said the