University of Virginia Library

26. CHAPTER XXVI.

Affairs of state, a shouting of stumporators,
and a buzzing of swarming fellow-citizens
recall us to Hartland.

The canvassing for the election of representatives
to Congress was at the boiling-point.
There was speechifying, discussion
around groceries and at street corners, generous
betting and chivalrous squabbling
every day. The principals in the contest,
as well as their partisans, had gone into the
struggle in the highest-toned fashion, prepared
to clean out the adversaries if the
latter persistently refused to hearken to
reason. When Peyton Beaumont went
forth on his stumping progresses, his sons
guarded him with revolvers under their
shooting-jackets; while Judge McAlister
was escorted in a similar manner by his
warlike progeny, even Frank admitting that
he must defend his father. As for the
Colts and Derringers, and bowies and tooth-picks,
which were carried by the rank and
file, they were beyond enumeration. Excepting
that the weapons were concealed,
these election scenes resembled the political
assemblages of the ancient Gauls, who discussed
questions of war and peace with
spear in hand and buckler on shoulder.
All these gaunt and long-legged men,
whether clad in “store-clothes” of black
broadcloth, or in short-backed, long-tailed
frock-coats of gray or butternut homespun,
were as bellicose as so many Scotch Highlanders
of three hundred years ago.

It must not be supposed, however, that
fighting was continuous or even very frequent.
As every man took it for granted
that every other man was armed, discussions
were usually conducted with great civility
of speech, unless the disputants had become
inflamed with whiskey. Even if angry words
were exchanged and weapons drawn, there
were friends at hand to do the proper
amount of coat-tail pulling, and bloodshed
was generally averted. As for such harmless
blusterers as Crazy Naylor and Drunken
John Stokes, they were allowed to roll
each other in the dust at their pleasure, it
being understood that they would only furnish
innocent amusement to their fellow-electors.
The fun which these conflicts
afforded was increased by the fact that the
defeated athlete usually pitched into some
boy or nigger who had laughed at his overthrow,
and kicked him with much swearing
around the nearest corner. Let us state,
by the way, that John Stokes and Crazy
Naylor were not landless crackers or penniless
village loafers. Although they dressed
in homespun and held such high-caste people
as the Beaumonts and McAlisters in
deep reverence, they were well-to-do farmers,
owning their five hundred acres and
their twenty or thirty head of niggers.
John Stokes, in spite of his frequent benders,
was “captain of patrol” in his “beat,”
or magisterial precinct. Crazy Naylor never
went howling about the streets and making
a spectacle of himself, except when he was
in liquor.

Notwithstanding the serious sensitiveness
of Southerners, and the danger of jesting
with punctilious men who carry revolvers,
much sly, coarse ridicule was current in the
Hartland political debates. For instance,
John Stokes, a violent adherent of the
Beaumonts, set afloat ridiculous tales about
the McAlister chieftain, representing him
as a man of little less than idiotic simplicity,
which was true in so far as this, that the
Judge had not the remotest idea of a joke.

“He go to Congress!” sneered John
Stokes. “Them Yankees would come
games on him an' poke fun at him from
Sunday morning to Saturday night. I 'll
tell you what sort of a man he is. The
Judge started out to canvass the district.

How did he do it? Got up his coach.
Sure as you 're born he got up his coach
an' four horses to go an' ask poo' men for
their votes. Well, he druv round an' kissed
the young uns an' talked Sabba' school to
the women folks, an' subscribed to meetin'-houses
an' all that sort of nonsense. An'
you bet he made mistakes. You bet on it
an' win every time. Durned ef he did n't
take short-haired Dolly Hicks, — she a
settin' by the fire wrapped up in blankets
because of the chills, — durned ef he did n't
take her for the old man an' ask her to vote
for him. Now you don't believe that, you
fellers of the McAlister crowd. But it 's
true; you bet your best bale on it; old
Hicks he told me. Now that 's a lively man
to go to Congress from Hartland District
and South Carolina. Why, he would n't
know a he Yankee from a she one. Them
fellers up thar in them foreign States would
stock the keerds agin him an' clean him
out every time. Now look at the Honorable
Peyton Beaumont in a poor man's cabin.
He don't come in no coach; he comes a
horseback. He walks in square an' strong,
like he was to home. He straddles out before
the fire, an' parts his coat-tails behind
him, an' hollers for his tod of plain whiskey,
an' chaws an' spits like one of the family.
He don't make no mistakes betwixt the old
man an' the old woman. He knows other
folks as sure 's he knows himself. He knows
the name of every voter in this part of
South Carolina an' the name of that voter's
dog. He 's that kind of a man that rouses
your entuzzymuzzy. He 's a man that
South-Carolinians will take a heap of
trouble for. We never had an election yet
but what loads of fellers would pile over
the line from every district round here,
walkin' or ridin' ten or fifteen miles perhaps
to give him a lift, an' that too after going
as fur for their own men whar they belong.
An' they 're right; they 're right in takin'
all that extra trouble for him; he deserves
it. I tell you, ef thar 's a gentleman in this
district who 's fit to stand for the people of
this district and South Carolina, it 's old
squar'-shouldered, open-eyed, true-handed,
big-hearted, high-toned Peyt Beaumont.”

Of course we are not to put absolute faith
in the partisan declarations of John Stokes.
There is no doubt that he exaggerated both
the innocence of Judge McAlister and the
slightly demagogic courtesy with which
Beaumont did occasionally temper his patrician
haughtiness.

But we must leave the political background
of our story and return to the personages
who occupy its foreground. Very
sad in these days was Frank McAlister,
miserable over the past, and despondent
over the future. He did not even believe
in the success of his party in the election,
for he had almost of necessity taken the
measure of his prim, solemn, unbending father,
and had guessed that he could not
carry Hartland electors against hearty, full-blooded,
off-handed Peyton Beaumont. The
Beaumonts would triumph at the ballot-box;
they would add contempt for his family to
hatred for it; there was not a chance for
him to win their daughter and sister. He
was in these days so gloomy, so haggard, so
unable to sleep, so unable to eat, that his
mother became terrified about him.

Of course she had guessed the cause of
his trouble; a woman and a mother could
not fail to guess it. But what could she do
to raise the spirits of her stricken giant, and
renovate his health, and save his life? It
was impossible to quiet the family feud, and
consequently impossible to get Kate Beaumont
for him. That sovereign remedy being
out of the question, was there no other?
Time? Alas, time is very slow in his
work, and affection abhors waiting. Mrs.
McAlister knew of a cure which was quicker
than that and every way more consonant
with her own feelings; it occurred to her
that it would be the best thing in the world
to get another young lady in the place of
the young lady who had been lost.

The proposition may shock a sentimental
man, but I suspect that it was both motherly
and womanly. A woman believes in love; if
one love affair fails, she requires that another
should commence as soon as may be. The
single adventure, though very great to her,
is not so great as the passion. Moreover,
her sister-women are cheaper in her eyes
than they are in ours, and she sees no sufficient
cause why the loss of one of them
should stop a man from using his heart, especially
in view of the fact that his heart is,
in her opinion, his noblest organ.

It was in consequence of these reasons
(which Mrs. McAlister did not of course
take the trouble to reason upon, not even
with herself) that she invited Jenny Devine
to make a visit under her roof. Stating
the case plainly, she meant to have Frank
fall in love with Jenny, and so forget the
girl whom he could not get. True, Wallace
was enamored of Miss Devine: the all-seeing
mother was not ignorant of that. But
Wallace, it was pretty certain, could not
have her; and, moreover, Wallace did not
stand in pressing need of matrimony, not
being broken in spirits and shattered in
health; and finally Frank, her youngest
and handsomest, was her favorite child.
Small, plain, bald-headed Wallace must be
sacrificed just a little to save his magnificent,
his suffering brother. The plan savored of
cruelty, but it was the cruelty of intense
affection, perhaps also of wise judgment.

Thus it was that pretty, flirting, jolly,
good-hearted Jenny Devine became an inmate

of the McAlister mansion. She did
not come at all unsuspiciously; she guessed
that coquettish passages awaited her; she
was somewhat like a cat entering a buttery.
In the first place, she was accustomed to be
begged for from house to house to entertain
young gentlemen visiting in Hartland, and
to enliven hops and teas with her music,
her dancing, her small talk, and her bright
eyes. In the second place, she knew pretty
positively that Frank McAlister had been
fascinated by Kate Beaumont, and so must
have found it a sad business to be divided
from her.

Yes, she was specially wanted; a flirtation
or something of that nature was to be
got up between her and this disappointed
young man; that was the object of Mrs.
McAlister. That Jenny was at least willing
to run a risk in the matter is shown by
the fact that she accepted the invitation.
She liked Frank, and she thought no less
of him for having liked Kate; for she was
not one of those sensitive girls who recoil
from a man because he has loved some one
else; she had had too many courting affairs
of her own to be fastidious on that point.
As for cutting out her absent friend, there
could be no question of it. Kate had been
cut out already by the revival of the old
hate between the two families. Moreover,
Kate was not in love with Frank; so much
Jenny believed that she had discovered.
Accordingly, with conscience clear of unworthy
intent, and with heart prepared for
either great or little emotions, she repaired
with her select armor of finery to the enchanted
palace of the McAlisters, to take
the chances of such adventures as might
befall her there.

She was received with a gladness, which,
considering the grave character of the family,
was equivalent to festivity. Mrs. McAlister
fairly leaned towards the girl; she
enjoyed her in anticipation as a daughter-in-law,
the chosen one of her favorite son;
she secretly loved her and blessed her in a
spirit of prophecy. It was the yearning of
a bereaved mother, who trusts that she is
yet to obtain a child in place of the one
that has been taken away. Not but that
Mrs. McAlister would still have preferred
Kate as a daughter; she had no spite
against the Beaumont men even, and she
loved their loved one dearly. But Kate
being lost beyond recovery, she must positively
have some one in her place, and in
her longing she grasped at Jenny.

One result of this craving — a result
which looks like the effect of witchery —
was that she at once lost sight of the girl's
defects, though plainly discernible by her
heretofore. Jenny was a flirt; so Mrs.
McAlister had thus far always admitted;
she had even been angry at her for trifling
with Wallace's affections; very angry because
of the quarrel which had been set up
between him and Vincent. She had said
to herself that Jenny Devine, notwithstanding
her good temper and mainly good intentions,
would make no fit wife for a man of
high character and sensitive feelings. Now
she forgave all these shortcomings and peccadilloes
so completely that she forgot them.
Jenny was no flirt; it was not supposable
that she could jilt Frank; she would accept
him and be an excellent wife and a
charming daughter. Mrs. McAlister reasoned
about the girl as a lover reasons about
the mistress of his heart. Desire and hope
did the whole of the argument, and of course
reached the most agreeable conclusions.

To all these feelings and wishes Mary
McAlister assented with the instantaneous
facility and energy of her loving soul. Not
that there was any open talk on the matter
between the mother and daughter; but the
latter had the power of divining the mind of
the former by sympathy; and the moment
she divined it she was guided by it. It would
be difficult to find any other two human
beings so much at one in opinion as these
two. Whichever felt first on any given
subject had the lead; the other discovered
the feeling by clairvoyance, and at once
shared it; there was no need between them
of statement, and much less of argument.
Thus they were always alike in their credences,
desires, and purposes. Even the
action, the ratiocination, and the persuasions
of the respected male folk of their family
could not divide them. Their union was a
singular and interesting, and almost touching
instance of the potency of mere feminine
sympathy. Both hated the feud; both
abhorred duelling and all bloodshed; both
adored Frank, and would have died for him;
both loved Kate Beaumont, and longed for
relationship with her; both accepted Jenny
Devine when Kate was no longer attainable.
The unanimity of reason is perhaps grander
than this unanimity of the heart, and no
doubt in the main practically more useful,
but surely not half so beautiful.

The tall, thin, gray-haired mother and
the tall, slender, chestnut-ringleted daughter,
both shooting rays of love out of large mild
eyes, embraced Jenny Devine with the same
tenderness.

“I am so delighted that we have not lost
you as a friend,” said Mrs. McAlister. “It
seems as if there were no friends of late.
Everybody is a partisan.”

“The Beaumonts will not be angry at
you for coming to us?” asked Mary. “We
did hope not when we begged for you. But
you must tell us.”

“I am not their kin,” replied Jenny.
“And I am not a man either. I claim a
woman's right to be sweet to everybody.

Don't worry about my good standing with
the Beaumonts. If the Honorable Peyton
looks glum at me, I shall take his arm and
smile in his face, and the next I know he
will be patting my head. These old gentlemen
are all fools with girls. If you had a
speck of courage and impudence, Molly,
you could go and tame him in fifteen minutes.
I do believe that, if I were in your
place, I could make him call on the Judge,
and ask the whole family to dinner.”

“Jenny, I wish we could work such miracles,”
sighed Mrs. McAlister. “I would go
on my knees to do it.”

“O, you would n't answer at all,” laughed
the frank and saucy Jenny. “It would take
somebody as young as Molly. By the way,
there is an idea; why, would n't that be
nice? Molly you could be Mrs. Peyton
Beaumont the third, merely for winking;
only, poor thing, you dont know how to
wink.”

“What nonsense!” protested Mary, in
blushing amazement. “Who could imagine
such a thing? Nobody but you.”

“I could make Dr. McAuley imagine it,”
whispered the teasing Jenny. “Would n't
he rage?”

Mary blushed still deeper, and glanced
with maidenly alarm at her mother, who, of
course, pretended not to hear, and looked
all benignity.

Jenny's frolicsomeness was one cause why
the McAlisters continually forgave her misdeeds
and liked her. They were a grave generation
without meaning it, and finding persistent
gravity a burden; and, like all such,
they extracted much comfort from jolly people
and craved them as thirsty souls do water.

Thus it may be conceived that Frank
McAlister, weighted always with seriousness
of spirit, and just now crushed under disappointment,
should incline kindly to the company
of this prattling and gleesome young
lady. Because she made him smile in spite
of himself, he liked to listen to her. Because
she turned whist into mere fun, he
took a hand as her partner. Presently he
came to walk with her, and then to ride
with her. The intimacy, ripened by his
sorrowful tenderness of feeling, burgeoned
rapidly into confidences. Before long the
subject of Kate Beaumont was broached
between the two, and after that there was
no end to their talking together.

What an enticing, abundant, limitless subject
it was! It was like a Missouri prairie
to a herd of buffalo; there was room there
to browse forever. Little by little Frank
told Jenny all that was in his heart, — how
he had loved, how he had hoped to win,
and how he had lost. The girl, in spite of
her levity, was like almost all other women
in the matter of quick sympathy, and especially
could not help being touched by a
tale of wounded affections. She forgot herself;
she opened her heart wide to his procession
of sorrows; and of course it followed
that he found her charming. In a
certain sense she was Jenny Devine and
Kate Beaumont in one. To talk to her
about Kate was the next best thing to talking
to Kate about herself.

Who has not smiled at the ease with
which many a grief-stricken widower has
been won by a woman who sincerely pitied
him for the loss of his wife? Shall we
have cause to smile thus at our hitherto unchangeable
lover, Frank McAlister?

“How tedious I must be to you!” he said
one day, ashamed of his egotism.

“You are not tedious at all,” declared
Jenny, her cheeks coloring with the enthusiasm
of honest and earnest feeling.

“Is it possible that you can like to hear
me tell how I love another woman?” he
asked, amazed.

“I do like it,” said Jenny. “She so nobly
deserves it.”

“Miss Devine, you are admirable,” he replied,
with profound reverence. “I am astonished
at women, the more I know of
them. They have so much unselfishness
and sympathy. I think a great heart is nobler
than a great brain.”

“Ah, don't give me too much credit,”
sighed Jenny, dropping her eyes. It occurred
to her just then that perhaps she was playing
falsely by her friend, and running risk of
winning that friend's lover. In the next
breath she said to herself: “But Kate does
not care for him; she told me so.”

In fact Jenny was becoming interested
and even fascinated. At the time this dialogue
took place she had been over a week in
the McAlister house. During that crowded
week she had seen much of Frank, and had
grown to be his intimate and his confidante.
She had looked further into his heart than
she had ever before looked into the heart of
man; and all that she discovered there had
led her to admire him exceedingly; to judge
that his love was worth any woman's having.
It was not for her; it was for her friend
Kate; but would it always be? She had
not distinctly asked herself this momentous
question, nor any other that concerned her
future relations with Frank. Rather she
had gone on blindly, first sympathizing, then
sympathizing more, then admiring, then
liking, then — No, not loving; not at all
that; at least, not yet. But there was danger
of it, and at times she saw the danger.

During the evening following this conversation
she announced her intention of returning
home on the morrow. But Mrs.
McAlister, in whose opinion things were
going on passing well, would not hear of it;
and Mary McAlister, guessing at once her
mother's ideas and consenting to them, also

would not hear of it. So strenuous was
their opposition, that Jenny gave up her wise
project and meekly stayed on, not knowing
what might happen to her heart, and
beginning not to care. “I shall be disappointed
in love,” she sometimes thought;
“but it does not matter a bit; I shall deserve
it.”

Meantime Wallace McAlister was wretched
with jealousy. His mother saw it and
grieved over it, but did not change her
plan for all her grief. To save Frank, it
seemed that Wallace must be sacrificed; it
was very sad that it should be so, but she
could not help it. After all, Wally must
not be a dog in the manger. Unable to get
Jenny himself, he must not prevent her
from saving his brother; that would be the
extreme of selfishness. The unlucky young
man himself thought something like these
thoughts in his more rational moments.
But none the less he suffered; felt his heart
shrivel when Jenny strolled out with Frank;
clapped his beaver on his poor bald head,
and went off to be miserable alone.

Another person who was troubled and
alarmed by this sudden intimacy between
Frank and Jenny was Major John Lawson.
He did not learn it from the McAlisters, of
whom he saw very little in these. days, he
being still a guest of Kershaw's, and consequently
more or less tied to the Beaumonts.
It was Mrs. Chester who told him of this
new peril which threatened his romance of
Romeo and Juliet in South Carolina. Mrs.
Chester had met Mrs. Devine; and Mrs.
Devine had been over to see Jenny in the
McAlister hunting-grounds; and the result
was certain motherly smiles and hints of a
prophetic and exultant nature. Thereupon
Mrs. Chester, who had turned to speaking
evil of her lost Titan as strenuously as she
had once followed after him, spread the report
that he was about to marry the greatest
flirt in Hartland District, namely, Miss
Jenny Devine.

“You don't tell me so, Mrs. Chester!”
grinned the disquieted Major, when she had
exploded this bit of news under his nose
like a fire-cracker. “My dear Mrs. Chester,
you don't seriously believe it! Why, it
would be a most delightful arrangement,”
he continued, recovering his self-possession
and wishing to stick some sly pins in Mrs.
Chester. “Really delightful! Jenny is an
admirable girl. A little of a flirt, no doubt,
as you say. But so are all women until
they are married. All the same, she is
admirable. Deserves him. Deserves anybody.
I had had hopes, by the way, that she
would have caught Vincent. I am a little
disappointed. Do you suppose, Mrs. Chester,
that our excellent friend Mrs. Devine
speaks with authority? Mothers are so
apt to deceive themselves, you know.
They are sharp-sighted, wonderfully sharp-sighted;
I admit it. But nevertheless they
do sometimes hang up a scalp for their
daughters which has not yet been taken.
Do you suppose, Mrs. Chester, do you really
suppose —”

“I know nothing about it,” replied the
imbittered lady. “Mrs. Devine makes her
boasts and I record them. Miss Jenny
Devine is nothing to me, and Mr. McAlister
is of course less than nothing. I merely
mention the thing as a matter of common
uninteresting gossip.”

“Ah,” bowed the Major, smiling unspeakable
compliments at Mrs. Chester, while in
the same breath he investigated her with
twinkling, analytic eyes. “Of course. Certainly.
Not worthy of your attention.
Certainly not.”

“I never was more mistaken in any man
than I was in that Mr. Frank McAlister,”
the lady went on vixenishly. “I thought
well of him for a short time; I thought him
good-hearted and a gentleman. He is a
selfish, stupid, low fellow. I never saw
another man so vulgarly and stupidly ungrateful
for civilities. It is well for our family
that we got shut of him and his breed.
I hope Jenny Devine will catch him. The
little cross jilt is just fit for him, and he is
just fit for her. They will punish each
other nicely.”

“Ah — you think so?” nodded the Major,
hardly able to keep from grinning in
her face. “Really, how dull we male creatures
are! Here I had been thinking well
of the girl; wishing my young friend Vincent
could catch her; envying him the
chance. God bless my soul, — God bless
my soul! Mrs. Chester, I am positively not
fit to go about the world alone. I need
your guidance at every moment; absolutely
need it, must have it,” he fluted in his finest
trills and quavers, cocking his head on
one side like a curious parrot, and puckering
his face into a thousand wrinkles, all
expressive of adoration and servitude. But
the moment he got out of her presence he
muttered, “Spiteful, disappointed old beldame!”

“What does the woman lie for in that
style?” he went on, commencing a long
soliloquy about this worrying bit of gossip.
“I don't believe a word she says. Frank
McAlister in love with Jenny Devine!
Frank McAlister forgotten Kate Beaumont!
Romeo false to Juliet! Impossible. I can't
have been so mistaken in the young man.
I know him; I have studied him; I have
looked him in the eyes; I have sounded
his character. Sounded it, — sound-ed it,”
he insisted, smirking and twinkling as if he
were talking to some one else than himself
and trying to carry conviction to his auditor.
“I must see Romeo,” he continued

vehemently. “I must say to him, `This won't
do; this spoils our drama; this will make
the plot a nullity; this will draw a storm
of hisses.' I will see him. It will be awkward;
it may lead to difficulties; the Beaumonts
may scowl at me. But no; the
Beaumonts prize me; they are under obligations
to me; they know that I fought
Tom well; yes, fought him well, begad,”
affirmed the Major aloud, chuckling over
the recollection of his only duel — as a second.
“And if the heathen do rage I must
defy them. In the name of the poetic unities,
I must defy them. I can't have my
romance, the darling romance of my life,
broken up because of an election, a mere
tempest in a teapot, a squabble sure to end
in six weeks. God bless my soul, I can't
have it. It would make me miserable. I
should leave this part of the country. And
I have already written to Charleston about
my little drama. Prophesied about it, —
bragged over it. I could n't go back to
Charleston. Where the deuce could I go?”

And, mounting his horse, the Major rode
off boldly toward the McAlister place, not
caring in his desperation what the Beaumonts
might think of his confabulating with
their enemies. He neared the house; he
got a view of the garden from the high road;
and there, among the roses he saw — what?
Frank McAlister walking with Jenny Devine,
bending over her in a manner which
indicated close amity, and holding her —
yes, her hand.

In his indignation and despair, the Major
at once wheeled his horse and galloped,
without drawing rein, to Kershaw's.