University of Virginia Library

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.

Warm hearts, as you already know, had
the Beaumouts; hearts quick to spring and
demanding incessant activity; not, however,
in the manner of lambs, kids, and other
playful creatures; rather like blood horses,
puissant for either good or evil.

Mrs. Armitage was like the rest of her
kind; when she was not hating she was
loving. By nature she was a woman of the
marrying sort, disposed to rush into matrimony
herself and to help others do the like.
Even now, despite her sad experience in
wedded life, she believed in making love
and taking the consequences. It was impossible
for her to conceive how a person of
her own sex could have a heart and not use
it. That a girl, under any circumstances,
should become an old maid as a matter of
preference, was a thing outside of her belief.
Not to love and not to marry was in
her eyes to be either a wilful monstrosity or
a victim of horribly adverse circumstance.
She was born to think thus, and could not
for twenty-four hours together think otherwise,
not even under the pressure of her
hardest wifely troubles, not even when flying
from her husband. It is no wonder
that a woman of such an affectionate and
sympathetic character should remember
Kate's declaration that she would never
marry, and should revolt against it.

“See here,” she began upon the girl
early in the morning. “I don't like your
saying that you will never take anybody at
all. You must n't get into that state of
mind. It is unnatural in a woman. It
can't lead to happiness. I don't believe
there is any such thing as single-blessedness,
— at least not for our sex. The phrase
is ironical; it really means single misery.
There are no contented and cheerful old
maids; you never saw one, and you never
will. An old maid is a complete failure.
She is like a man who does not succeed in
man's careers. Rather than be one, you
had better marry a scoundrel, even if you
get a divorce from him. You would at
least have some short use of your affections;
and you would, besides, occupy your mind
and your time. Now that is the deliberate,
serious opinion of a wife who has failed almost
as completely as a wife can. I want
you to lay it to heart.”

“O, tell me about it some other time,”
sighed Kate, wearied of the subject of
marriage, or fancying that she was so.

They reached the station without seeing
Frank McAlister or learning whether he
would be with them on the train. When
the cars started he had not yet appeared,
and they supposed that he had remained
behind. Kate was disappointed; she had
hoped to have him near her, though she
might not even look at him; she had expected
to draw just a little consolation from
that unsocial propinquity. But, strange to
say, Mrs. Armitage was also disappointed,
in spite of her feeling that his absence was
a relief, and that it was for the best.

“I did not expect such discretion,” she
said to herself; “he is not so mannish a
man as I took him to be; he is almost too
gentlemanly a gentleman.”

Turning presently to throw a shawl over
her seat, she saw him standing on the rear
platform of the car, and glancing sidelong
through the window. She was so amused,
and, in spite of her uneasiness, so gratified,
that she could scarce forbear laughing outright.
“I might have known it,” she
thought; “he has got there to look at Kate
undisturbed; just to look at the back of her
bonnet.”

She absolutely longed to beckon him in
and offer him her own place. A few minutes
later she discovered that he had slyly
entered and was sitting on the rearmost
seat, with his face settled straight to the
front. “O dear!” she reflected, “how is
this going to end? I am afraid I shall be
wickedly weak about it. I have n't half
hard-heartedness enough for a duenna.”

She was so interested in this love imbroglio,
that during most of the journey
she forgot her own troubles. She was so bewildered
by it that she could not remember
her prejudices as a Beaumont, her sage
deliberations as a woman who had seen life,
and her anxieties as an elder sister. The
near presence of strong love intoxicated a
nature given to affection and full of sympathy
for it. That man behind her, sending
all his soul through his eyes at Kate's hat-ribbons,
she could not help thinking of him
continually, could not help wishing him
success. “If it only could be!” she repeatedly
said to herself; and presently she
began to inquire, “Why should it not be?”

Her former fancy for the youngster came
back upon her in full force; and from liking
him the next step was to consider him
unexceptionable as a match. After an hour
or so of sympathizing with the longings of
this faithful and fascinating lover, it seemed
clear to her that Kate could not find another
man who would make her so good a
husband. As for the intervening family
feud, could it not be got rid of by defying
it? It had blocked the engagement; but

if the engagement should be brought about
by main force, that might block the feud;
the initiative, the aggressive, counted for so
much in these matters. She remembered
two scolding negresses whom she had once
seen, one of whom was pouring forth a
stream of abuse, while the other listened
with an air of patient menace, merely muttering,
“Ef you coughs, you 's gone up.”
She smiled at the recollection and said to
herself, “If the quarrel coughs, it is done.”
In spite of her conscientiousness, her manly
sense of honor, and her strong family feeling,
Nellie was soon dallying with the idea
of a runaway match. Her principles were
as high and solid as mountains, but her
sympathies were as strong as the volcanic
fires which devour mountains. Vigorous in
every point of her character, she was all the
more a changeable creature, a woman of the
women.

At last — O, how impatiently Nellie had
waited for it! — the younger sister rose,
arranged her travelling-rug, looked about
her and discovered Frank McAlister. He
ventured to remove his hat as he caught
her glance, and she just drooped her long
lashes in acknowledgment of the salute.
When she sat down again her cheeks were
rose-beds of blushes, and her hazel eyes
were full of flashes which blinded her.

“Ah, you saw,” whispered Nellie, trembling
with an excitement which was almost
glee. “I knew an hour ago that he was
there.”

“O Nellie, what shall I do?” asked Kate,
reeling between terror and an irresistible
gladness.

“Jump out of the window,” advised Nellie,
fairly giggling. We must surely pardon
her slightly hysterical frame, when we remember
how little she had slept of late.

“Nellie, you are laughing at me,” said
Kate piteously. “It is shabby and cruel of
you.”

“So it is. But I can't help laughing.
He is actually browsing on your bonnet
trimmings.”

“Be still, Nellie,” begged the girl, raising
both hands to her cheeks, as if to push
back the crowding blushes. “You shall not
make me so ridiculous. O, I wish he had
stayed away! Why did n't he?”

“It is too absurd,” declared Mrs. Armitage,
with a nervous start. “I can't have
him there making an image of himself and
making everybody wonder what we are. I
must bring him up here where he will have
to behave himself.”

“O, no!” pleaded Kate. “It will lead
to misunderstanding and trouble of all
sorts.”

But, impelled by her nerves, Mrs. Armitage
sprang to her feet, faced toward the
young man, and beckoned him to approach.
He obeyed her in great anxiety, expecting
to be requested to leave the car, and fully
prepared to make the rest of the journey
with the baggage-master, or even to jump
off the train if so ordered. This last feat,
by the way, would not have been an eminently
dangerous one, inasmuch as the railroad
velocity of that region rarely surpassed
ten miles an hour. It must be understood
also that the train had only one passenger-car,
and that one by no means full. Negroes
travelled not at all, except as nurses, etc.;
the low-down population travelled very little;
high-toned people were scarce.

“I suppose that you have no provisions,”
said Mrs. Armitage to the youngster.
“Since you are here, you must share in our
basket. Would you mind turning over the
seat in front and riding backward?”

“I am very grateful to you,” replied
Frank, who would have ridden on a rail to
be near Miss Beaumont.

Then followed a conversation of several
hours, — a conversation managed with good
taste and discretion; not a word as to the
family quarrel or the love affair; all about
travelling, Europe, and other unimpassioned
subjects. Sensible, full of information, and
for the time in good spirits, the young man
was fairly luminous, and more than ever
dazzled Mrs. Armitage. By the time the
party separated she had arrived at a solid
resolve to break up the family feud if possible,
and to bring about a match between
these two, whether it were possible or not.
Of course the male Beaumonts would not
fancy her projects, and perhaps would oppose
them domineeringly and angrily. But
she determined to fight them; her long contest
with the brutalities of her husband had
made her somewhat of a rebel against men;
and besides, the law of the “survival of the
fittest.” had blessed her, as it had blessed
all her breed, with abundant pugnacity.

“I am his sworn ally,” she said to her sister
as they drove homeward from the Hartland
station. “If he proposes, do you
accept him. Then I will go to papa with
the whole story, and if he is naughty, I will
appeal to your grandpapa.”

“I will neither do nor permit anything of
the sort,” replied the almost over-tempted
Kate, with tears in her eyes.

“We will see,” prophesied Nellie. “O,
you good little cry-baby! Kiss me.”

As there had been no time for advisatory
letters, the two ladies were their own heralds
at the plantation. But while the father
and brothers were surprised by their advent,
they were all the more delighted. The
family sympathy was so strong in this race,
that in the matter of welcoming kinspeople
the Beaumont men were more like women
than like the generality of their own sex.
Moreover, in the dull routine of plantation

life, every event is a gratification, and especially
every visit.

“Why, my babies!” trumpeted Peyton.
“This is the blessedest sight I have had in
a month. So, Kate, you could n't stay away
any longer from your old father? God
bless you, my darling. And Nellie, — why,
I had n't a hope of this, — this is too good.
So you brought her down, did you? Nellie,
you were always a wonderful girl; always
doing some nice thing unexpectedly. And
the little fellows, too! Heavens, what boys
they are! what boys!”

When the brothers came in there was an
incomprehensible clatter of talk. These
eight Beaumonts, old and young, babbled
in a way which would have done honor to
their remotest and purest French ancestors.
Despite the sad secrets lurking in some of
these hearts, it was a scene of unmixed enjoyment
and abandon. In the gladness of
meeting their relatives, even the women
forgot their troubles.

Not till the next morning, not till Peyton
Beaumont had had time to settle upon
the fact that his daughters were paler and
thinner than when they went away, were
any unpleasant subjects broached. Drawing
Nellie into his favorite solitude and
sanctum, the garden (the old duellist loved
flowers), he demanded, “What the — what
is the matter with you two? Here I sent
Kate up country to get rosy and hearty,
and she has come back as pale as a lily.
And you, too; why, I never saw you so
broken down; why, I thought you had a
constitution: what is the matter?”

“See here, papa,” began Mrs. Armitage,
and then for a breath was silent. “Well,
it has come time to act, and of course it is
time to talk,” she resumed. “I have had
to leave my husband, and I am excusable
for telling why.”

“Had to leave your husband!” echoed
the father, his bushy eyebrows bristling
and his saffron eyes turning bloodshot.
“The infamous scoundrel!!”

He was so much of a Beaumont that he
never doubted for a moment that his own
flesh and blood was in the right. He asked
for no more than the fact that his daughter
had felt herself compelled to leave her husband.
On that he judged the case at once
and forever.

Then came the wretched story; at least
a part of it; enough of it.

“The infamous scoundrel!” repeated
Beaumont, breathing hard, like a tiger
scenting prey. “Be tranquil. Be perfectly
easy. He won't live the month out.”

“Have a care what you do,” replied
Nellie. “I don't want the whole world to
know what I have suffered.”

“Who is going to know it?” interrupted
the old fire-eater. “By heavens, I 'll shoot
the man who dares to know it. If any
man dares to look as though he knew it,
I 'll shoot him.”

“You can't shoot the women,” said Nellie.

“We can call out their men,” was the
reply of a gentleman who knew the customs
of good society.

“And every stone thrown into the puddle
will rile it the more,” sighed Nellie.
“Besides, I don't want blood split.”

“But, good heavens, you don't mean
that I shall bear this abuse of you in patience,
— bear it as though I were a Yankee
pedler or a Dunker preacher! It can't
be borne.”

“Father, here is what I want of you,”
declared Nellie, as emphatic as her parent.
“Bear it as I do. You are surely the least
sufferer of the two. All I want is to be allowed
to live apart from my husband. Help
me in that; protect me in that. I not only
do not ask anything more, but I forbid anything
more. In this matter I have a right
to command. I want you to promise me
that there shall be no challenging on my
account. If you won't promise that, I will
go back to him.”

After a long argument, and after a good
deal of bloodthirsty glaring and snuffing the
air, Beaumont grumbled an ungracious and
only partial assent.

“Let him keep away, then,” he said,
shaking his iron-gray mane. “If he wants
to go on breathing, let him keep out of my
sight.”

“You won't tell the boys anything of
this?” begged Nellie, remembering that
her influence over her brothers was slighter
than that over her father.

“Why not?” demanded Beaumont, who
had half meant to tell the boys, knowing
well their pugnacity.

“Father, you comprehend why of course.
Do grant me this favor; do promise me. I
want this whole matter in my own hands.
Leave it to my judgment. Promise me not
to tell them.”

And so, unable to resist a child, and
above all a daughter, Beaumont sulkily
promised.

“But of course you will go on staying
here,” he insisted.

“I don't know where else to stay,” groaned
Nellie, suddenly wounded by a sense of dependence.

“My God, my child!” he exclaimed,
throwing an arm around her waist and
drawing her close to his side. “Where
else should you stay?”

“And my children, too,” added the mother,
hardly able to keep from sobbing.

“I would like to see anybody get them
away from here,” returned Beaumont, squaring
his broad chest as if to face a combatant,

and thrusting his hands into his pockets
with an air of drawing derringers.

Left to himself, he muttered a great deal
about Armitage, shaking a clenched fist as
if he had the brute before him, elevating
his bushy eyebrows as a wild boar raises his
bristles, halting abruptly to stare fiercely at
vacancy, etc.

“After all, I fancy that her way of managing
the scoundrel is the best,” he finally
decided. “What a woman she is, that
daughter of mine! What fortitude and
sense! In her place I should have made
fifty scandals long ago. By heavens, these
women amaze me, they do indeed. In
their own business — that is to say, in matters
that belong to — well in short, their
own business, they are wonderful.”

When he thus praised women he of
course meant such as were born ladies, and
more particularly such as were born Beaumonts,
though he could hardly have been
thinking of Mrs. Chester.

Nellie's next notable conversation with
her father began with a reference to the
controversy with the McAlisters.

“When does the election take place?”
she asked.

“In about three weeks,” calmly responded
the veteran politician.

“And the misunderstanding with the
Judge still continues.”

“Humph,” grunted papa. It occurred
to him that in discussing his affairs of
state she was getting beyond woman's business.

“It would be well to devise some plan to
make him give up his opposition,” continued
Nellie.

“Humph,” repeated Beaumont. He was
determined not to talk with her on this subject;
he preferred to be left to his own will
and judgment in masculine matters.

“Could n't he be got to withdraw his
candidature?” persisted the daughter.

“I don't want him to withdraw,” snorted
Beaumont, starting like an angered horse,
and forgetting his purpose of reticence.
“I prefer to have him run. I want to beat
him.”

“O,” said Nellie, somewhat disappointed.
“I had an idea that beating him was not so
certain. Poinsett tells me that it is likely
to be a very close contest.”

“Did Poinsett say that?” asked the father,
clearly a little alarmed. “Well, I
must admit that the Judge is working very
hard. There is a great deal of money being
spent, — I don't know where it comes
from, — but it does come. By heavens, if I
get a hold on them!”

“It would be a capital thing, then, to induce
him to withdraw,” inferred Nellie.

“But how the deuce is it to be done?”
answered Beaumont, in a pet. “Do you
know what you are talking about? I don't
think you do.”

“Perhaps not,” assented Nellie, sagaciously;
she was leading the way to a
change of subject; she was devising a new
approach.

“Then let us drop the matter,” said the
bothered candidate.

“I have something to say to you about
Kate,” resumed Nellie, opening her second
parallel. “Did you ever know that Bent
Armitage is very fond of her?”

“Bent Armitage!” exclaimed the father
in great wrath. “I 'll have no more Armitages
in my family. I won't have one in
my house. It 's a bad race. They run to
drunkenness and brutality. One of them
is enough and a thousand times too much.
Bent Armitage may go to the Old Harry.
He can't have my daughter. He sha' n't
speak to her. He sha' n't come here.”

“I thought you liked Bent pretty well.”

“So I did, in a fashion. I liked his
gabble and his stories well enough. I 've
no objection to hearing him talk now and
then. But when it comes to his paying attention
to Kate, that is quite another thing.
Besides, I did n't fully know until now
what a beast an Armitage can be. I did n't
thoroughly understand the nature of the
breed. Now that I do know all that, I
don't want to see him at all. I don't want
any of the crop on my place.”

“Bent is better than some men,” softly
said Nellie, remembering his kindness to
herself.

“I tell you I don't want to hear about
him,” insisted Beaumont. “The moment
you talk of the possibility of his courting
Kate, I hate him. No more Armitages.”

“McAlisters would be better,” suggested
Nellie.

“Yes, even McAlisters,” assented the
father. Although his words were ungracious,
his manner did not show much bitterness,
for at the moment he thought of
Frank, and how he had once felt kindly
towards him.

“A good deal better,” added Nellie.

Beaumont stared and bristled. “What
are you talking about now? I can't always
keep track of you.”

“Frank McAlister is altogether the best
of the family,” said Nellie, picking a flower
or two with a deceptive air of absent-mindedness.

The father stared in a puzzled way; but
at last he gave a humph of assent.

“That 's no great matter,” he presently
growled. “It does n't take much of a man
to be the best of the McAlisters.”

“I don't see how the Judge could have
such a noble fellow for a son,” observed
Nellie.

“Nor I either,” declared Beaumont,

thrown off his guard. “By heavens, he is
a fine fellow, considering his surroundings.
He is a perfect contrast to that sly old fox,
his father. It 's just as though a Roman
should be the son of a Carthaginian. He
has the making of a gentleman in him. To
be sure, he did treat Tom — But never
mind about that; he did his best to make
amends for it: he did very well. I must
say, Nellie, that I was grieved to break
with that young fellow. I had begun to
like him.”

“Ah, you liked him because he liked
Kate,” replied Nellie, insinuating the love
affair into the conversation with admirable
dexterity.

“Nonsense!” denied Beaumont. “Well,
of course I did,” he immediately confessed,
for he abhorred lying, even to white lies.
“Naturally I like to have my children appreciated,
and think well of people who do
appreciate them. I admit, too, that I admire
a man for exhibiting a proper perception
of character, and especially of such a
noble character as Kate undoubtedly has.
But if you mean to say that I meant —”

“No, I don't mean to say that you meant
anything,” interrupted Nellie. “I will just
say what I mean myself. I wish that match
had come off.”

“No, no,” protested Beaumont. “I
should have lost my daughter. We never
can have a year's peace with that family.
I can't have Kate married among people
who would drag her away from me and set
her up to fight me. I did think of it; I admit
it. I was taken with that fellow, Frank,
and I did think of letting him try his
chance. But what has happened since
then puts an end to the idea forever. No
marriage with McAlisters. I can't allow
it; I can't consider it. And if you mean to
suggest that I ought to favor the match for
the sake of getting rid of my political rival
and assuring my seat in Congress, you are
not the child that I have taken you for.
Before I would sell one of my daughters in
that way, I would let myself be shelved forever
and I would step into my grave.”

“Don't do me injustice,” said Nellie. “If
I hinted at that idea, I laid very little stress
upon it, even in my own mind. But there
is one thing that I want you to consider seriously.
It is Kate's happiness. You must
understand fully that she likes this young
man, and, as I believe, likes him very much.
You must understand, too, that he is one of
the best men that she can ever hope to
have. She may never receive so good an
offer again. He has n't a vice, not even of
temper. You don't want her to marry an
Armitage.” (A growl from Beaumont.)
“Well, there are plenty of Armitages who
don't bear the name. To be sure, there are
other young fellows as good perhaps as this
one; there is Poindexter and Dr. Mattieson
and our clergyman and so on; all nice fellows.
But Kate does not care for them.
And for him she does care.”

“O Nellie!” groaned Beaumont. “Stop.
I can't talk about this now. Some other
time, when we get out of this fight, if ever
we do. But I can't discuss it now. Do let
me alone. Do you want to break my
heart?”

“No, nor Kate's either,” said Nellie.