University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.

While Frank waited for Mr. Beaumont,
in order to ask him whether he might or
might not propose marriage, he either
walked up and down before Mrs. Armitage
in absent-minded silence, or he talked altogether
of Kate.

This behavior did not make him tiresome
to the lady; on the contrary, she found him
incessantly agreeable and fascinating. A
man who has donned the cross of love, and
set his adventurous face toward the holy
city of marriage, is to a woman one of the
most interesting objects that she can lay
eyes upon, even though he looks for his
crown to some other queen of beauty. To
her mind he is bound on the most important
and noblest of pilgrimages: the question
of his success or failure impassions her
imagination and kindles her warmest sympathies;
she can hardly help wishing him
good fortune, even though he is a stranger.

“But I must weary you, Mrs. Armitage,”
apologized Frank, not knowing the above-mentioned
facts. “I must seem terribly
stupid to you.”

“No, indeed,” returned Nellie, innocently,
and continued to prattle away about
her sister, telling every minute more of the
subject than she meant to tell, and revealing
through sparkling eyes and flushed
cheeks her satisfaction with the state of
things.

But this quarter of an hour of delightful
expectation was a false portal, not opening
to higher felicities. In place of Peyton
Beaumont came his tropical henchman,
Cato, riding up at the usual breakneck speed
of darkies on horseback, rolling out of his
saddle with the agile bounce of a kicked
football, and holding forth a letter with the
words, “Powerful bad news, Miss Nellie.”

Mrs. Armitage read to herself and then
read aloud the following note from her
father: “Tell Kate — gently, you understand
— that her grandfather is sick; you
might say quite sick. On the whole, you
had better send her over here to take care
of him. I may stay here over night myself.
Now don't scare the child out of her
senses. Just send her over here at once.”

“You see,” said Nellie, looking up at
Frank with something like a pout of disappointment
at the postponement of the love
business.

“I see,” answered the young man, turning
anxious and gloomy. “I must come
another time.”

He started soberly homewards; then,
after going a quarter of a mile, he had a
bright thought and returned to escort Kate
over to Kershaw's; but, although he thus
secured a half-hour with her, he proffered
no manner of courtship, knowing well that
it was no time for it. Finally, after seeing
Lawson and learning from the troubled
man that the good old Colonel was dangerously
ill, he once more turned his back on
his queen of hearts, the love message still
unspoken.

Reaching home, he met in the doorway
his evil genius, and politely bowed to him
without knowing him. This fateful stranger,
this man who, without the slightest ill-will
toward Frank, or the slightest acquaintance
with him or his purposes, had come
to cross his path and make him dire trouble,
was, in some points, a creature of agreeable
appearance, and in others little less than
horrible. His blond complexion was very
clear, his profile regular and almost Greek,
his teeth singularly even and white, and his
smile winning. But he was unusually bald;
his forehead was so monstrous as to be a
deformity; his eyes had the most horrible
squint that ever a scared child stared at;
his expression was as cunning, unsympathizing,
and pitiless as that of a raccoon or
fox. His moderate stature was made to
seem clumsily short by over-broad shoulders,
thick limbs, and a projecting abdomen.
It was difficult to guess his age, but he might
have been about forty-five.

The Judge was escorting this visitor to
his carriage with an air of solemn politeness
and suppressed dislike, such as an elephant
might wear in bowing out a hyena.

“I regret that you can't at least stay to
dinner, Mr. Choke,” he said, smiling all the
way from his broad wrinkled forehead to
his broad double chin. “As for the business
in hand, you may rely upon me.”

“I expect nothing less from your intelligence
and noble ambition, Judge,” replied
Mr. Choke, with a smile so sweet that for a
moment Frank failed to notice his squint.

Let us now go back an hour or so, and
learn what was “the business in hand.”
Although this combination of beauty and
the beast had come unexpectedly to the
McAlister place, and had simply announced
himself through Matthew as “Mr. Choke
of Washington,” the Judge had guessed at
once what mighty wire-puller it was who
waited in his parlor, and bad thoughtfully
stalked thither, snuffing the air for political
traps and baits and perfidies. He, however,
remembered his manners when he came
face to face with his guest; he uttered a
greeting of honeyed civility which at once
set on tap all Mr. Choke's metheglin.
Each of these remarkable men (two of the
most remarkable men in our country, sir!
says Jefferson Brick) was by many degrees
more polite than the other.

“I am delighted to welcome you to South
Carolina, sir,” said the Judge, with such a
benevolent smile as Saint Peter might have
on admitting a new saint into Paradise. “I
have long known the Hon. Mr. Choke by
reputation. Let us hope that you are prepared
to stay with me for some weeks at
least.”

“You are exceedingly courteous and hospitable,”
replied Mr. Choke. “You are
even more courteous and hospitable than I
expected to find you. The South, Judge
McAlister, is the land of hospitality and of
courtesy. It should be. Heaven has lavished
abundance upon it. What a soil,
what a climate, and what men!” looking up
reverently at the McAlister's lofty summit.
“Even the water is a luxury.”

It must be observed that these two men
flowered out thus in compliments from very
different causes. The host blossomed because
he had grown up in doing it, and
because all the people whom he knew expected
it; while the guest, an extremely
business-like man by nature, was merely
talking what he considered the fol-de-rol of
the country.

“We are unworthy of our gifts, and you
do us too much honor, Mr. Choke,” chanted
the Judge, when it came his turn in the responses.
“I beg pardon. Excuse me for

having forgotten your proper title. Judge,
I believe, is it not?”

“No,” returned the visitor, beaming out
a smile of humility which was pure flattery.
“I have not yet gained your eminence. I
am merely an attorney-at-law, and of late a
member of Congress. I have no claim to
any address beyond plain Mister.”

Merely a member of Congress! The
Judge could not prevent the blue philanthropy
of his eyes from turning a little
green with envy. The title of “M. C.”
had been for more than a quarter of a century
the mark of his ambition. To set those
two letters to his name he had spent money,
gushed eloquence, intrigued, entertained,
flattered, bowed, grinned, lived, almost died,
and all in vain. Ever since age had qualified
him to run for that goal, the State party
had been an overmatch for the Union party
in his district, and it was always a Beaumont,
or some other Calhounite, who had
won the Congressional race. At last, two
years previous to this interview, he had despaired
of being called to save his country,
had publicly announced his final withdrawal
from politics, and declined a candidature.

But the disappointment rankled in his
soul, and he still cherished wild dreams of
success. His desire and hope were increased
by his contempt and dislike for the men
who had beaten him. In his opinion the
Hon. Peyton Beaumont was nothing but a
well-descended blockhead and rowdy. It
was abominable that a man who had the
rhetoric of a termagant and the logic of a
school-boy should represent, year after year,
a district which contained within its bounds
the copious, ornate, argumentative, and
learned Judge McAlister. A man who
hoarsely denounced a spade as a spade
had surely no claims compared with a man
who blandly reproved it for being an agricultural
implement. Moreover, Beaumont
made few speeches in Congress, and those
few excited bitter opposition. The Judge
imagined himself as orating amid the echoes
of the Hall of Representatives with such
persuasiveness and suavity as to draw even
the Senate around him, and to beguile Sumner
himself into moderation. Yet he was
not elected, and his inferiors were. It was
horrible; like the belted knight who was
overcome by the peasant, he cried, “Bitter,
bitter!” and, in his revolt at such outrage,
he could not believe that Heaven would be
forever unjust.

Mr. Choke was an experienced detective
of feeling. Looking modestly at the floor
with his oblique eye, but studying his host's
face steadily with his direct one, he perceived
that he had won the game. The
Judge was angrily envious; the Judge passionately
desired to go to Congress; the
Judge could be made use of. Suddenly
dropping the conversational roses and lilies
which he had waved hitherto, Choke entered
upon business.

“Judge, we want you alongside of us,”
he said with an abruptness which wore the
charm of sincerity. “We need just such
men as you are in Congress. We need
them terribly.”

It was precisely McAlister's opinion, and
he could not help letting his eyes look it,
although he waved his hand disclaimingly.

“Now don't object,” begged Mr. Choke.
“I must be earnest, as I have been blunt.
I must beg you to consider this matter seriously.
I came here for that purpose; came
here solely and expressly for that; hence
my abruptness. Yes, I came here to beg
you to take your proper place in the Congress
of the United States.”

“O, if I only could!” was the wish of
the Judge's heart. But he controlled himself,
wore his dignity as carefully as his wig,
and pursed his mouth with the air of a Cincinnatus
who does not know whether he
will or will not save an ungrateful country.

“You are perhaps not aware, Mr. Choke,
that I have withdrawn definitely from public
life,” he said, stroking his chin. This
chin, we must repeat, was on a magnificent
scale; it was even broader than the capacious
forehead which towered above it; it
gave its owner's face the proportions of an
Egyptian gateway. It had development
forward, as well as breadth of beam. It
was one of those chins which proudly front
noses. From any point of view it was a
great chin. There was plenty of room
about it for rubbing, and the Judge now
went over it pretty thoroughly, stirring it
up as if it contained his spare brains.

“We understand that Beaumont is going
to run again for the House,” continued Mr.
Choke, who did not believe that any old
politician ever withdrew definitively from
public life, and had no time to waste upon
pretences to that effect. “We don't want
him there. He is a marplot. He is a barking
bull-dog who brings out other bull-dogs.
Every word that he utters loses us votes at
the North. If he and such as he continue
to come to Congress and keep up their stupid
howling there, the party will be ruined,
and that shortly.”

The great, calm, and bland Judge could
scarcely help frowning. It did not please
him to observe that Mr. Choke spoke only
of the party. In connection with these matters
the leader of the moderates of Hartland
District always said, “The country!”

“We must get rid of these mules who
are kicking the organization to pieces,” continued
the straightforward and practical
Choke. “That is the object of my present
tour. If we can bring into Congress twenty
Southerners who will talk moderation, we

are saved. It is all important to make a
break in this phalanx of fire-eaters. It is
almost equally important that the break
should be made here in South Carolina.
Divide the voice of this State, and you split
disunion everywhere. Am I right?” inquired
the Hon. Choke, perceiving that it
was time to flatter the Judge, and stopping
his speech to smile his sweetest.

“I entirely coincide with you,” bowed
McAlister, who, anti-Calhounite as he was,
believed that South Carolina marched at
the head of the nations, and that what she
did not do would be left undone. He was
a little out of breath, by the way, with following
after the speaker. He was not used
to such rapid argumentation and application.
It was his custom to go over a subject
with long chains of reasoning, staking
them out deliberately, and often stopping to
look back on them with satisfaction. Mr.
Choke was rather too fast for him; had the
air of hurrying him along by the collar;
might be said to hustle him considerably.
The Judge did not quite like it, and yet it
was obviously his interest to listen and approve;
it was clear that something good
was coming his way.

“Well, we look to you,” pursued Mr.
Choke, with that bluntness of his which
was so startling, and yet so flattering, because
confidential, — “we look to you to
beat Beaumont.”

The Judge was like a woman on a sled
drawn over smooth ice by a rapid skater.
Unable to stop himself, he must hum swiftly
along the glib surface, even though a breathing-hole
should yawn visibly ahead. He
had an instantaneous perception that running
against Beaumont would reopen the
family feud, and spoil Frank's chances for
marrying the presumptive heiress of the
Kershaw estate, besides perhaps leading to
new duellings and rencontres. But how
could he check his lifelong mania for going
to Congress, while this strong and speedy
Choke was tugging at the cords of it? The
sagest and solidest of men have their weak
and toppling moments. Unable to reflect
in a manner worthy of himself, and incapable
of restraining his ambition until Frank
should have made sure of the Kershaw succession,
he sprawled eagerly at full length
toward the House of Representatives, and
agreed to run against Beaumont.

“If you need help, you shall have it,” instantly
promised Choke, anxious to seal the
bargain. “Our committee will furnish you
with the sinews of war. The organization
will go deep into its pockets to secure the
presence of such a man as Judge McAlister
in Congress. You can draw upon us for
five thousand dollars. Do you think that
will do it?”

“I should think it highly probable,”
bowed the Judge, virtuously astounded at
the hugeness of the bribe, and unable to
imagine how he could use it all.

“My best wishes,” said Mr. Choke, taking
off a very modest glass of the McAlister
sherry. “And now allow me to wish you
good morning.”

“But, God bless my soul! you must stay
to dinner,” exclaimed the Judge, breathless
with this haste.

“A thousand thanks. But I really have n't
the time. I must gallop over to Newberry,
arrange matters with Jackson there, and
get on to Spartanburg by the evening train.
A thousand thanks for your lavish hospitality.
Let us hear from you. Good morning.”

And Mr. Choke bustled, smiled, and
squinted his way out of the McAlister mansion,
leaving its master thoroughly astounded
at the unceremoniousness and speed of
“these Northerners.”

But the chief of the Hartland conservatives
was soon himself again. By dint of
fingering that talisman, his broad chin, he
rubbed out his emotions and restored his
judgment. Once more in a reasoning, independent
frame of mind, he coolly queried
whether he should keep his promise to Mr.
Choke, or break it for some patriotic reason.
He had very little difficulty in deciding that
he would hold fast to it. There, to be sure,
was the family feud, certain to “mount” him
if he ran for Congress; but it was a burden
which lifelong habit had made easy to his
shoulders. There, too, was the strong probability
that his candidature might upset
Frank's dish of cream. But if he should
once beat the Beaumonts, if he should once
show them that he was a rival to be feared,
would they not be all the more likely to
agree to an alliance, not only matrimonial,
but political? As for the boy's heart, the
Judge did not think of it. It was so long
since he had been conscious of any such
organ, that he had forgotten its existence.
On the whole, he would keep his promise;
on the whole, his word as a gentleman was
engaged; especially as revenge and power
and fame are sweet. But there should be
discretion shown in the matter; until his
trap was fairly set, nobody should know of
it, excepting, of course, his trusted and necessary
confederates; from the sight of even
his own family he would hide it, as he knew
how to hide things. Meanwhile, before the
Beaumonts could so much as suspect what
he was about, his son might lay an irrevocable
hand on the heart of their heiress.

“Frank,” he said next morning; “you
ought to ride over to Kershaw's and inquire
about the Colonel. If Miss Beaumont is
still there, present her with my kindest regards
and sympathies, and tell her I am
distressed to hear of her grandfather's illness.

Exceedingly distressed, you know!”
emphasized the Judge, his brow wrinkling
with an agony that stirred his wig.

So Frank rode over to Kershaw's, obtained
an interview with Miss Beaumont,
and spoke the speech which his father had
dictated, but not the one which his father
had intended. How could a sensitive, generous
young fellow spring love-traps upon the
woman whom he worshipped, while she was
trembling for the life of her adored grandfather?
This fruitless riding to and fro
went on until the Judge became impatient
and very anxious. Of the probability of
Kershaw's death and the certainty that his
estate would go to Kate Beaumont he talked
repeatedly to his wife, hoping that she would
be inspired to repeat these things to Frank,
and that the boy would be led thereby to
make haste in his wooing. At times, when
it occurred to him that he might be ruining
his son's chances of success and happiness,
he was so far conscience-stricken and remorseful
as to wrinkle his forehead and go
about the house muttering. In those days
guileless Mrs. McAlister could not imagine
what it was that made her usually calm and
bland husband nervous and waspish.

Frank, too, was in sore trouble; he wore
a pinched brow, and grew thin. He afflicted
himself with imaginations of Kershaw dying,
and of Kate weeping by the bedside.
In more selfish moments he cringed at the
thought that funereal robes would prevent
him for weeks or months from telling the
girl what was in his heart! The longer
the great declaration was put off, the more
he feared lest it should be ill received.
There were whole days in which he felt as
if he were already a rejected lover. Even
Mrs. Armitage could not keep up his spirits,
although she was by this time keenly and
obviously interested in his success, and
talked to him daily in a very sweet way
about her sister.

At last, unable to bear his suspense longer,
he resolved that he would at least utter
his gentle message to the father, trusting
that some blessed chance would waft it on
to the daughter. Anxiety and doubt walked
with him to the interview; and his heart
was not lightened by the countenance with
which he was received. Peyton Beaumont,
always sufficiently awful to look upon,
seemed to be in his grimmest mood that
morning. His very raiment betokened a
squally temper. The neatness of attire
which marked him when Kate was at home
and saw daily to his adornment had given
way to a bodeful frowsiness. He had
dressed himself in a greasy old brown coat
and frayed trousers, as if in preparation for
a rough and tumble. Apparently he had
slept badly; his eyes were watery and blood-shot,
perhaps with brandy; his voice, as he
said good morning, was a hoarse, sullen
mutter.

“Mr. Beaumont, I have come to ask a
great favor,” began Frank, with that abruptness
which perhaps characterizes modest
men on such occasions. “I ask your permission,
sir, to offer myself to your daughter.”

Beaumont was certainly in a very unwholesome
humor. His optics had none of
the kindness which frequently, if not usually,
beamed from their sombre depths
when he greeted the savior of his favorite
child. Even at the sound of that tremulous
prayer of love they did not light up
with the mercy, or at least sympathy which
such an orison may rightfully claim. They
emitted an abstracted, suspicious, sulky stare,
much like that of a dog who is in the brooding
fit of hydrophobia.

“I don't understand this at all,” he replied,
deliberately and coldly. “Your father
and you — between you — I don't understand
it, I don't, by heavens! It looks as
though I was being made a fool of,” he
added, in a louder and angrier tone, his
mind reverting to McAlister perfidies of
other days.

“I beg your pardon, — I don't comprehend,”
commenced Frank, utterly confused
and dismayed. “I should hope that —”

“Is n't your father preparing to run against
me for Congress?” interrupted Beaumont,
his black, blood-streaked orbs lighting up to
a glare.

“I don't believe it!” was the amazed
and indignant response.

The elder man stared at the younger for,
what seemed to the latter, a full minute.

“Mr. Beaumont, do you suppose I am deceiving
you?” demanded Frank, his face
coloring high at the ugly suspicion.

After gazing a moment longer, Beaumont
slowly answered, “No — I don't, — no, by
Jove! But,” he presently added, his wrath
boiling up again, “I think your father is
humbugging us both. I think, by heavens
—” He had been about to say something
very hard of the elder McAlister's
character as to duplicity; but, looking in
the frank, manly, anxious face of this
younger McAlister, his heart softened a
little; he remembered how Kate had been
saved from death, and he fell silent.

“It is useless now to ask an answer to
my request,” resumed Frank, after a pause.

“Yes,” said Beaumont. “Things don't
stand well enough between our families.
What you propose would only make worse
trouble.”

“I will go home and inquire into what
you allege against my father,” continued
the young man, with a sad dignity. “Meantime,
I beg you to suspend your judgment.
Good morning, sir.”

He held out his hand. Beaumont took
it with hesitation, and then shook it with
fervor.

“By heavens! I don't know but I 'm a
brute,” he said. “If I 've hurt your feelings
— and of course I have hurt them — I
beg your pardon; I do, by heavens! As for
what you propose, — well, wait. For God's
sake, wait. Good morning.”

More miserable than he had ever been in
his life before, Frank rode home to call his
father to an account.