University of Virginia Library

33. CHAPTER XXXIII.

Before Kate fairly recovered from her
fainting fit, her brother Vincent placed a
powerful opiate at her lips and she drank
it, so that the first hours of her bereavement
passed away in sleep, or rather in disturbed
and spasmodic dozing.

Leaving her in the hands of this merciful
insensibility, let us see how others were
affected by the death of Kershaw. Even
previous to that event Peyton Beaumont
had made it his duty to exorcise Randolph
Armitage from his house. When that high-flung
gentleman made his appearance, on
the morning after he had been put to bed
drunk and with a broken scalp, his father-in-law's
first words to him were, “Are you
able to travel, sir?”

“I suppose I am,” sullenly replied Randolph,
with a scowl of mingled pain and
anger.

“Then travel, sir,” growled Peyton, the
brown veins in his forehead and the red
veins in his cheeks swelling with wrath.

Randolph started, placed one hand to his
bandaged head as if to repress its beatings,
made an evident effort to recover his self-possession,
and seemed about to remonstrate.

“Don't you speak, sir,” thundered Beaumont.
“You can't have your wife and children.
As a husband and as a father, as
well as in every other way, you have been
a brute. Get out of my house. Get out of

this district. If I find you in the neighborhood
to-morrow, I 'll have you hunted like
a wolf. Not one word, sir. Be off!”

With the air of a cowed but savage cur,
Armitage walked silently out of the house,
and that very day quitted Hartland for
parts unknown.

Sadly and heavily, Beaumont now went
to find Nellie, and said to her, “My poor
child, I have sent him away.”

Nellie placed her hands on her father's
shoulders, as if for support, and laid her
head against his cheek so as to hide her
face. She remembered that it was her own
husband, once very dear to her, who had
thus been driven out, and she remembered
also that she could not reasonably say a
word against his ignominious expulsion. In
that bitter moment she was fully conscious
of her loneliness, her degradation as a wife,
her failure as a woman. She expressed
her wretchedness and her resignation in
one brief sentence, “I have ceased to be a
wife.”

“My dear, it was time,” murmured Beaumont,
in hoarse, tremulous bass. “My dear
child, no one can blame you,” he presently
added in a louder tone. “I should like to
look the man in the face who would dare
blame you.”

The next notable event in the household,
an event already related, was Kershaw's
death. In the village, in the district, and
even in all the midland part of the State,
it produced a prodigious excitement. The
profound popular respect which had for
many years surrounded this “last of the
barons” (as some men called him) blazed
up in a flame of wrath against his murderers.
All the fighting men of the region,
as well as all the non-fighting men and the
women, were for once virtuously indignant
at an assassination. Even the intimate
friends of the McAlisters found it hard to
excuse them, and their numerous enemies
were in a state of mind to lynch them gladly,
had lynching high-toned gentlemen been
ethically permissible.

The Judge, honestly horrified by the
tragedy, had moral sense enough to foresee
the storm which it would arouse, and to
shrink from encountering it. He promptly
published a card in the “Hartland Journal.”
In this card he expressed his sincere grief
for the death of Colonel Kershaw; he eulogized
the old man's character in a style
which strong feeling made eloquent; he
flatly denied that his sons were responsible
for the homicide, and asked the public to
suspend its judgment until further information.
Bruce and Wallace also put forth a
joint statement, in which they asserted that
neither of them had aimed at the deceased,
and that their action in the mêlée was a justifiable
defence of their brother.

But their plea was useless. Nearly all
Hartland believed that they had killed
Kershaw, and that in so doing they had
committed an abominable crime. Even
their assertion that they had not aimed
at the old man was turned against them
by this community of marksmen. John
Stokes, a fervent adherent of the Beaumonts,
be it charitably remembered, expressed
very pithily the prevailing opinion.

“Popped the Colonel by accident, did
they?” said Mr. Stokes, taking a fresh
quid aboard and chewing it vigorously,
while he meditated upon the infamy of the
confession. “Sech men no business carryin'
shootin'-irons,” he resumed, in his leisurely
way. “Why, I consider it one of
the highest of crimes an' misdemeanors to
pop a man by accident. I 'll leave it out
to all Hartland, if it ain't. Why, look
hyer. Ef I save a man beknownst an' a
purpose, I may hev good reason for it.
Anyway, I know what I 'm after. I do
what I set out to do, an' nothin' else. You
know how to count on me. You know
what I 'll do next time I put my hand
under my jacket. Take the Beaumonts,
now,” instanced Mr. Stokes, after another
prolonged grinding. “They don't go round
shootin' the best men in the country by
accident. When they pop you, they mean
it. They 've shot as many as any other
crowd in the State, an' never had no damn
foolish accident yet, but allays bored the
feller they drew bead on, an' no other.
Now thar 's men you can tie to; thar 's
men you can hev a confidence in; thar 's
men you can feel safe with. I tell you, I
love an' respect them Beaumonts, for what
they do, an' for what they don't do, for
what they hit an' for what they miss. A
man that 's allays doin' jest what you reckoned
he was gwine to do is the man that
John Stokes swings his old broadbrim for.
That 's so.”

After another stern assault upon his
quid, he concluded his virile profession of
faith, worthy surely of the heroic age.

“But as much as I love business, I hate
foolin' round an' firin' wild. A feller that
goes about killin' by accident, you can't
tell what he 'll do nor whar he 'll stop.
He may clean out the whole poppylation
by one accident after another. Children
an' niggers an' stock an' property at large
ain't safe when sech a feller is loose. He
can't be trusted. A decent community has
no use for sech a man. In a general way
he oughter be strung up with the nighest
grapevine. I don't want to raise a crowd
agin the McAlisters,” added Mr. Stokes,
remembering that they were high-toned
gentlemen and owned hundreds of negroes.
“I 've allays considered 'em hitherto as

straight-shootin' men an' tolerably reliable
men every way, except in politics. I 'm
willin', as the Judge requests in his keerd,
to suspend my judgment. But I must say
that so fur, accident or no accident, things
is agin 'em. Yes, sir, as sure as cotton is
white an' niggers is black, things is powerfully
agin 'em.”

Things were so much “agin 'em,” and
the Judge was so clearly aware of it, that
he persisted in withdrawing his congressional
candidature, though dismally uncertain
whether Beaumont would now recommend
him for the United States Court.
In explanation of this step he put forth a
second card, which was dictated, like many
other political effusions, by a mixture of
subtlety and right feeling, but which expressed
such admirable sentiments, and
expressed them so well, that it regained
for him a certain measure of popular consideration.

“In consequence of the universal horror
and grief at the death of the late lamented
Colonel John Kershaw,” he wrote, “and in
view of the as yet mysterious circumstances
which seem to throw the responsibility of
the tragedy upon members of my family, I
withdraw my name as candidate for the
House of Representatives, merely begging
my esteemed fellow-citizens, and especially
my faithful political friends, to believe that
it is not an evil conscience which impels
me to this step, but solely respect for, and
sympathy with, a community mourning its
noblest citizen.”

“At least,” thought the Judge, “I have
a good excuse to send to Mr. Choke and
his committee. And, moreover, I think the
card must bring people around a little.”

It did bring them around somewhat, but
not enough and not soon enough to influence
the election, even had the Judge's
adherents still persisted in considering him
a candidate. The voting took place the
day after Kershaw's death, and resulted in
an overwhelming triumph for Peyton Beaumont,
two thirds of the electors supporting
him and the other third staying at
home. The Judge received the news of
his rival's gigantic success with the calmness
of a strong man accustomed to misfortunes.

“It is what I looked for,” he said to his
excellent wife, with whom he consorted
much in his times of trouble. “It was
inevitable, — once my name withdrawn.
Well, the clouds must clear up some day.
Heaven,” he added, feeling somehow that,
because he was chastened, therefore he
was good, — “Heaven will some day see
that justice is done me.”

He did not even show petulance to Bruce
and Wallace because of the calamity which
they had brought upon him.

“In general I disapprove of rencontres,”
he said to them. “If gentlemen must fight,
they should fight under the code, in most
cases. But this was an exceptional case.
It was defence against assassination. You
were unquestionably right, you were right
in the sight of God and man, in trying to
rescue your brother. The Beaumonts themselves,
unreasonable and savage as they
are, must see it. I have no douht that you
saved Frank's life. I approve of your
action. Approve? God bless me, I thank
you for it! As for the death of poor Kershaw,
time will show that your statement is
correct, and that you are not responsible
for it. All-discovering time and Heaven's
own justice,” perorated the Judge, trembling
eloquently with his faith and piety.

The Judge's affairs took on brightness
quicker than the reader probably sees reason
to hope. The public prejudice against
his family was destined to receive a prompt
and potent shock. There was a grand-jury
inquest into the death of Kershaw, and
necessarily a post-mortem examination.
Then was satisfied a craving curiosity
which had kept all Hartland awake of
nights. To understand this inquisitiveness,
it must be stated that the fighting men
of the region frequently marked their bullets,
partly perhaps out of a chivalrous feeling
that every one ought to take the responsibility
of his own shots, and partly
that each might be able to vindicate his
marksmanship by identifying his proper
game. It was a custom which had been
introduced by those leaders in chivalry, or,
as some few people said, in savagery, the
Beaumonts. Of course it was expected by
all the enemies of the McAlisters that the
fatal bullet would disclose the letter M.
What then was their astonishment when
the letter was found to be A!

“A!” whispered Vincent, as he handed
the tragical bit of lead to his father.

“A!” gasped Peyton Beaumont, after a
long stare of amazement and a quick glance
at Vincent.

“It is an ugly hieroglyphic — for us,”
observed Poinsett, sombrely.

“What! — was it Armitage?” demanded
Tom, blurting out what the rest had shrunk
from uttering.

“He was the man,” responded Beaumont
with drooping head. “The calamity is ten
times more dreadful than we knew.”

All four were silent for a time, weighed
down by the same terrible reflection, that
upon their house rested the responsibility
of the death of Kershaw.

“It must have been a pure accident,”
said Poinsett at last. “Armitage had nothing
against our old friend.”

“It was a stupid drunken accident of a
miserable drunkard and idiot,” muttered

Beanmont, dashing tears of grief and rage
from his eyes.

“One thing puzzles me,” resumed Poinsett,
whose legal mind was already cross-questioning
the circumstances of the tragedy.
“Armitage did all his firing before
Bruce and Wallace came up. Consequently
the Colonel must have known that it was
not they who hit him. Now, why did he
not state it?”

“Wanted to save the honor of our family,”
thought Tom.

“No,” sighed Beaumont, shaking his head.
“Kershaw was our friend, but not to the
point of injustice. He was too truthful a
man to let the responsibility lie at the
wrong door deliberately. It is more likely
that he thought the secret would perish with
him, and so no one would be punished for
his death. That was like Kershaw. He
had no spite in him. He was the gentlest-hearted
man that ever drew breath.”

But Vincent had a surgeon's explanation,
and it was noticeable that it at once secured
the assent of his auditors, so chirurgical in
mind had they become through fightings
and hearing of fightings.

“Sometimes a man is not at once aware
that he is hit,” he said. “I have seen a
fellow who had lost first blood insist upon
going on with his affair, quite unaware that
he was wounded, and smartly wounded at
that. I have known a fellow, shot through
the shoulder, who complained that the ball
had gone down into his thigh, and finally
discovered that the pain in the thigh was
caused by a second ball which had struck
him there, without causing at first any noticeable
sensation. It is wonderful what
hits a man may take in a moment of excitement,
without immediately remarking
them. I suspect that Kershaw never really
knew when he was wounded. Had he
known it I think he would have told us, he
was naturally to straightforward and frank.”

“You may be right, Vincent,” answered
Beaumont. “I remember something of the
sort happening to myself.”

The reminiscence was uttered quietly,
and no one looked surprised at it, nor were
any questions asked. The Beaumonts never
babbled about their combats, and rarely
mentioned them, except incidentally or
when business demanded it.

“What are you going to do with that?”
asked Tom, as Vincent walked away with
the proof of Armitage's homicide.

“I am going to put it in Mattieson's
hands to exhibit it to the jury,” was the
response.

Beaumont gave Tom a grave glance which
seemed to ask, “Would you think of concealing
it?”

The young fellow dropped his head and
made no further remark.

When the story of the ownership of the
fatal bullet spread through Hartland, there
came a mighty change in public sentiment.
The McAlisters were cleared of Kershaw's
blood as if by a hurrah. People wanted
Randolph Armitage brought to justice, and
were not far from ready to lynch him, gentleman
as he was. Peyton Beaumont was
freely criticised (behind his back) for having
allowed his son-in-law to disappear, and
was even charged with having urged him to
escape before his guilt should become known.
Nor were there wanting low-minded gossips
incapable of appreciating the pugnacious
old planter's unselfishness and strenuous
sense of honor, who hinted that he had long
been waiting for the Kershaw estate, and
had become impatient. Furthermore, the
Beamonts were held accountable for Armitage's
breach of hospitality in attacking
Frank under their roof. Bruce and Wallace
were justified for defending a brother
in danger of assassination. In short, popular
feeling and opinion had never before run
so strongly in favor of the McAlisters, and
against their rivals; and had the election
been held after the inquest, instead of before
it, the Judge might have gone into
Congress by a respectable majority. Of
this fact, by the way, he was the first to
take notice; and he groaned over it in a
spirit that was natural, though not praiseworthy.

At last, however, all the circumstances of
the mêlée became public, and then Hartland
settled down to blaming Randolph Armitage
alone, considering that the other combatants
had done what was right according
to their knowledge, and so merited, not reprobation,
but culogy.

Nevertheless, the Beaumonts remained
in a state of grief, wrath, and humiliation.
Considering themselves responsible in a
measure for their relative, Armitage, they
were ashamed of his attack upon their father's
guest, and furious at his homicide of
their noble Kershaw. The death of the
good old man was an awful loss to them in
more ways than one. He had been not
only their adviser in doing what was right,
but their ægis against criticism when they
had done what was wrong. On the rare
occasions when society dared to condemn
them for their battlings and other peccadilloes,
they had been able to respond,
“But we keep the friendship of Kershaw,
and therefore cannot be very culpable.”
Without him, they felt less strong than hitherto,
and they mourned him on that account,
as well as because they had loved
him.

It would seem now as if Beaumont ought
to have fulfilled his promise to Kershaw to
do his best at burying the hatchet. But,
instead of sending pacific messages to the

McAlisters, he turned his back on them and
on Hartland, and went off to Washington.
He remained absent some weeks, during
which nothing was known of his purposes
or his doings, except that he was much seen
in political circles. From him, therefore,
we turn to his sorrowing daughter, Kate.

This affectionate, sensitive, puissantly
sympathetic nature had been bruised to the
core by the great calamity which had fallen
upon it. Her best and wisest friend, the
sweet old man of whom she had made a pet
from her infancy, the being toward whose
purity her own pure spirit had instinctively
inclined, had been torn from her by a hideous
accident, a brutal mistake. At first she
had received the blow with an amazement
which had the effect of incredulity. This
often happens to the afflicated, and it is well
that it is so. Sorrow, to use the intelligent
phrase of Vincent Beaumont, is thereby
distributed over a greater number of heart-beats,
and thus permits the heart to beat on.

But day after day passed, and Kershaw
did not return. Little by little the girl fully
realized her bereavement, and little by little
it appeared that she could not well endure
it. To those who loved her, and therefore
watched her comprehendingly, it was a terrible
thing to see the storms of grief which
sometimes came upon her, even when she
was striving to maintain a sunny countenance.
In the midst of a conversation she
would be stricken dumb; her head would
fall slowly back, and her eyes turn upward
as if seeking to pierce other worlds; then,
with a quiver of the throat, she would utter
a loud, shuddering sigh. It was only a momentary
spasm, for almost immediately she
would regain her usual air, and perhaps
finish a sentence. But short as the tremor
had been, her heart had given forth a portion
of its vitality, and there was less for
the purposes of living. There are eruptions
which at once show the power of the
volcano and eat away its case.

Of course her trial was a complicated
one, and her grief a legion. In losing her
best and dearest friend, she had lost her
chances of domestic peace, and her hope of
being able to live for love. Who, now that
Kershaw was gone, would keep quiet those
wild broods of Beaumont and McAlister
men, always ready to fly at each other's
throats? What probability was there that
she would ever be able to place her hand in
the outreaching hand of him who had won
her heart? Her father and brothers, kind
as they meant to be to her, were so many
causes of anxiety and terror, such was their
readiness to expose life and to take it.
From her sister, more unfortunate than a
widow, a wife whose husband was in peril
of the gallows, she had no right to demand
consolation. If she looked to the past, it
was a series of troubles, billow raging after
billow. Its successive shocks had already
weakened her, so that she was the less able
to withstand the present.

The human being, bodily and spiritually,
is a unity. The mind cannot chafe long
without causing the strength of the body
to fail. Sorrowful brooding by day, and
nights of broken, unrefreshing sleep, soon
made the girl an invalid, and gave her the
air of one. Her rich color faded, her limpid
hazel eyes became dull and despondent,
and her fine figure lost somewhat of its
rounded outlines.

But sadly as the physical languished, the
spiritual suffered even more. Before long
Kate fell into a melancholy which took an
unwholesome theological cast, akin to superstition.
In her diseased imagination
God became a Moloch, demanding the
death of the innocents of her heart. She
was possessed by an impression that some
great sacrifice was demanded of her. What
could it be, except the man whom she now
loved, as she was compelled to admit, above
all other living beings?

Heavy laden with this terrible idea, and
striving in vain to shake it off by efforts of
reason, the girl wandered in deserts of gloom.
Restless with an emotion which claimed to
be remorse, she went from room to room
with such a haggard face and abstracted
gaze as to draw wondering stares from her
relatives. One whole day she passed alone
in her chamber, praying that the intolerable
cup might pass from her. But the heavens
were of brass; it seemed to her as if
the sun refused to shine upon her; as if all
nature reproved her for her selfish rebellion.

At last, overcome by the reproaches of
her mock conscience, she bowed her will to
this supposed duty. Kneeling before her
Bible, sobbing forth supplications for resignation,
she promised to expel Frank McAlister
from her heart, and to think no more
of marrying him, no more of loving him.

She had expected that this vow, could
she ever utter it, would give her peace.
But it did not; something else was now demanded
of her; the cruel Moloch of broken
health and shattered nerves was insatiable;
she must still sacrifice, choosing whatever
was pleasantest and dearest. She must give
up her home, go forth from her own flesh
and blood, and labor somehow, suffer somehow,
alone.

This new requisition of the mocking spirits
of invalidism drove her almost frantic.
Unfortunately there was no one in the family
to whom she would naturally turn for
counsel in such difficulties. Her aunt and
brothers were not in any sense spiritually-minded;
even her sister, notwithstanding
her puissance of sympathy, could not comprehend
her. Once, when Kate ventured

of this passionate evolution into one phrase,
— he fell in love.

Now imagine Kate Beaumont in daily
intercourse with this pitying, worshipping
young man, and receiving from him the only
ideas that could give her any semblance of
peace or joy. What wonder if an impression
should come upon her, like a message
delivered by some invisible archangel, commanding
her to revere her comforter, to
imitate his beautiful life, to renounce like
him a dying world, and like him devote
herself to the good of others? She had
thoughts of entering a hospital as a nurse,
or of going abroad as a teacher of the
heathen. But, woman-like, with all her
self-abnegation, she felt that she needed in
these labors a fellow-apostle, who should be
her support and guide. So also felt and
thought the Rev. Arthur Gilyard, remembering
meanwhile that his people had been
urgent with him to take a wife, and trusting
that Heaven had shown him one who was
worthy to share his mission.

But this strange courtship, this courtship
which strove to be unconscious of its own
real nature and purpose, must have the
go-by for the present. We are called upon
to turn to an unpleasant figure in our
drama. Mrs. Chester is about to make
trouble, and must be watched.

Notwithstanding a certain constant jealousy
of Kate, notwithstanding that it always
annoyed her to see another woman
admired, Aunt Marian's first feeling with
regard to the Gilyard courtship was mainly
gratification. The harebrained, spiteful old
flirt had not yet forgiven Frank McAlister
for preferring a niece to an aunt; frivolous
as she seemed, she had sincerity and earnestness
enough to hate him heartily and
to want him to be miserable. “If Kate
takes this stick of a minister,” she said to
her unamiable self, “it will plague that tall
brute properly.”

But we must be more serious than usual
with Mrs. Chester. A singular change,
capable of germinating ugly consequences,
had come over this always sufficiently singular
woman. Whether it was that the
late startling events in the family life had
shaken her nervous system, or whether it
was that some constitutional transition or
some occult decay of health had suddenly
diminished her power of self-control, at all
events she was in an uncommonly excitable
state. She was as restless, dissatisfied, and
fretful as a teething baby. Always troubled
with plans and wants, she had them
now by scores, and had them dreadfully.
Every day some new project for being
happy was proposed, advocated with pettish
eagerness, and dropped for another. She
was as agitated in body as in spirit. She
could not sit still; into a room, and out of
it; changing from sofa to settee: always in
movement. At last people began to notice
how she buzzed about, how incessantly and
eagerly she talked, how oddly her black eyes
sparkled.

“What the doose is the matter with Aunt
Marian?” grumbled Tom, annoyed by her
humming-bird activity. “I 'd as lieve have
a basket of hornbugs in the house. If she
should bang against the ceiling and come
down kicking on the floor, I should n't be
astonished.”

“She is only a good deal more like
herself than usual,” observed the philosophic
Poinsett. “We are all of us annoying
when we are excessively in character.”

“She is behaving queerly, even for her,”
judged Vincent, the semiphysician.

Well, among her numerous projects,
Mrs. Chester conceived that of going to
Washington with Representative Beaumont,
keeping house for him during session time,
giving grand receptions, having members
of the Cabinet to dinner, coquetting with
mustached secretaries of legation, and becoming
nationally famous as a queen of
society. A judicious portion of this enchanting
prospect, that is to say, such part
of it as included having one's own nice
bed and excellent cookery in a capital not
famous for such things, she had set before
the mind's eye of her brother just previous
to his leaving Hartland.

“I would take a house there, if I could
have my daughters with me,” replied Beaumont,
always a father.

Mrs. Chester frowned: she did not want
the daughters along; they would be her
rivals with the secretaries.

“Do you think I could n't take care of
you, Peyton?” she asked, reproachfully;
“an old housekeeper like me!”

“That is n't it,” answered Peyton, who
nevertheless had his doubts. “I don't
want the expense of a Washington house,
and Washington hospitalities, of course,
unless my children, my girls at least, can
share the pleasure with me. You are very
kind, Marian,” he added, with judgment.
“But, you see, I am an old fool of a father.”

“I know you are,” retorted Mrs. Chester,
snappishly. But in another instant this
versatile gadfly changed her direction and
decided to accept her nieces.

“Let the girls come, if they wish it,” she
said. “We shall be all the gayer.”

“Gayer!” almost growled Beaumont.
“How can they be gay? How can they go
into society at all? You know what a row
Armitage has made, and that he has disappeared.”

“O, certainly, Nellie can't go,” admitted
Mrs. Chester, thinking, so much the better.

“Nor will Kate, I am sure,” added Beaumont.

“Why not? He was only her grandfather.”

Peyton gave his sister rather a black
look, and replied, “That is a good deal,
especially when he was the man he was.
My God, we let the dead slip out of mind
soon enough. Would you have us hurry
up our forgetting?”

“You are always snapping at me,” said
the lady, with a violent gesture which
showed how slight was her self-command.
“You are very hard-hearted.”

Beaumont stared in amazement and indignation.
Then, for the first time perhaps,
he noticed the unusual brilliancy
and unsteadiness of his sister's eye, and
wondered whether she were as well as usual.
Deciding that she was not fit for controversy,
and that he as a man ought to show
forbearanee, he made no answer to her
attack. She will discover on reflection, he
said to himself, who it is that has been
hard-hearted.

He ought to have known his sister better;
she was not a person to see herself as
others saw her; she was as incapable of
introspection as a cat. It is worthy of note,
by the way, as an instance of her versatility,
that she had promptly dismissed her interest
in the Gilyard courtship, on discovering
that it might interfere with her Washington
whimwham.

“I think you don't sufficiently consider
Kate's interests,” she resumed. “Her
health, poor child, is suffering. She ought
to be taken away from a place where she
has met with such affliction. She needs
amusement. You ought to have her with
you, whether she wants to go or not. She
need n't be very gay, you know,” explained
Mrs. Chester, thinking that she would receive
the mustached secretaries while Kate
should sit up stairs and read her Bible. “I
could take the heaviest part of the entertaining
off her hands. She could just drive
about and see the sights and recover her
cheerfulness.”

Beaumont grinned, almost audibly. His
sister had already set up a carriage at his
expense in Washington. He said to himself,
How like her!

“You are right about Kate,” he observed,
aloud. “She does need change of scene
and air. Well, when session opens, if she
feels disposed to go with me, I will set up a
house.”

The next morning he departed for the
capital on the mysterious business of which
we have already spoken.

Mrs. Chester now turned her mind to
bringing Kate into the Washington project.
Taking advantage of a moment when the
girl seemed more cheerful than usual, she
went at her with the smile of an angel, that
is, of a fallen one.

“Your father is very anxious to keep
house, this coming session,” she began. “He
is sick of those wretched hotels, and wants
his own bed and his own table. His plan is
to take you and me with him, and have a
comfortable home, you know, and give a few
dinners and receptions, and be somebody in
society there. It will be so much for his
interest, and so much for his comfort too!
I am so glad he has settled upon it.”

Now this was stating the matter pretty
strongly, was it not? Did Mrs. Chester
mean to lie or to exaggerate? Well, not
exactly; she did not see that she was lying
or exaggerating much; perhaps she did not
see that she was doing so at all. She was
one of those persons who desire so impulsively
and passionately, that they easily impute
their desires to other people. She
stretched the truth, and annexed what was
not the truth almost unconsciously. No
doubt, also, her present abnormal nervousness
may account for somewhat of her audacity
of invention.

“Receptions in Washington!” murmured
Kate. The sorrowing soul sbrank from
gayeties as an invalid might shrink from a
voyage among the chilly glitter of icebergs.

“O, I will see to them mainly,” offered
Mrs. Chester, that sly child of forty-five.
“You could be in or out, as you wished.”

“I don't see how I could well avoid them,
if I were in the house.”

“Well, why should you avoid them?”
demanded Mrs. Chester, with shocking
cheerfulness.

“But, dear aunt, I cannot think of it,”
replied the girl, piteously. “How can I
think of it?”

“O, don't be so weak-minded,” exhorted
the dear aunt. “Do try to think of somebody
besides yourself,” she added, finding
one of the most sympathetic beings in the
world guilty of egotism. “You ought to
get at your sewing at once,” she continued,
remembering perhaps what a fascinating
business dressmaking is to women, and how
quickly it can give them a fresh zest for life.

“If my father really wishes me to go to
Washington, I must go,” said Kate, sadly.

But during the day she wrote to her father;
and before long she received a reply,
leaving the matter entirely to her choice;
and, armed with this letter, she once more
faced her aunt.

“There, you have spoiled all,” snapped
Mrs. Chester. “You went and cried to
him, and melted him as usual. You are the
most selfish, the slyest, the—”

“Aunt Marian, you do me injustice,” interrupted
Kate, her eyes opening wide with
the astonishment of maligned innocence.

“O, do I? I should think I did. Ha,
ha! Well, I suppose so,” replied Aunt Marian
with incoherent irony. “Perhaps I do

the young man injustice, too,” she added,
more intelligibly.

Kate, however, did not understand. A
blush slightly tinted her cheek, but it did
not refer to the Reverend Gilyard. She
simply saw that she was attacked, and she
flushed under the outrage.

“But I understand, miss,” proceeded
Mrs. Chester, in a truly irrational passion.
“A young minister, a sweet-voiced young
minister, with solemn, saintly blue eyes, is
a great consolation. O, I have seen many
young girls comforted that way before now!
I am not a fool, miss. I know my own sex.”

The coarse insult pierced even through
Kate's incredulity that an insult could be
meant. Without a word she put her hands
to her ears and escaped from her denaturalized
tormentor.

“She will tell her father of me,” thought
Mrs. Chester, with a transitory terror. But
after a minute of reflection, or rather of
certain emotions which served her in place
of it, she burst out violently, “I'll stop this
courting.”

Her next notable dialogue on this subject
was with Mrs. Devine, the mother of our
little coquette, Jenny. Mrs. Devine was
one of those mild, soft-spoken women who
have no mind nor will of their own, but
who, in carrying out the desires of some
adored being, can show the unexpected persistence
and pluck of a setting hen. Unlike
Mrs. Chester in character, and much disapproving
her worldly ways, she nevertheless
consorted with her a good deal, because of
old fellowship in the langsyne of boarding-school,
and because of the intimacy between
Jenny and Kate.

Now Mrs. Devine's heart was bent on
getting her darling minister married, and
she had settled upon Kate Beaumont as the
best match attainable for him. Such a dear,
good, lovely girl was surely a very proper
prize for such a dear, good, lovely man.
There was money there, too, and Mr. Gilyard
undoubtedly ought to have money, he
was so indifferent to it, and knew so little
how to keep it. There had been a time
when Mrs. Devine had pinched and saved
on his account, thinking that perchance he
might become the steward of Jenny's moderate
fortune. But he had not been so
guided; and the mother had finally had the
grace to see that her daughter was unfit to
be a minister's wife, — had acknowledged
with humility that she was much too
thoughtless and gay. And surely Providence
was in it; for, if her idol had married
Jenny, he could not have married
Kate; and Kate was just the girl to be
able to appreciate the idol and make him
comfortable on his altar.

Well, Mrs. Devine had prayed for this
match, had intrigued for it, had prophesied
it. Accordingly Mrs. Chester, who did not
desire the match lest it should prevent her
from going to Washington, had a bone to
pick with Mrs. Devine.

“I hear that you want your minister to
marry my niece,” was the opening attack
of this energetic, though desultory woman.

The setting hen struck out promptly and
gallantly in defence of the eggs which she
was hatching.

“I am sure she could not find a better
husband,” she replied. “I am sure it is
better to marry a man like Mr. Gilyard
than to plunge into the dissipations of
Washington.”

Mrs. Chester was very excitable in these
days, remember; and this attack upon her
favorite project touched her where she was
most sensitive.

“It seems to me, Mrs. Devine, that you
trouble yourself too much about other people's
girls,” she replied with flashing eyes.
“I should say that you had quite enough to
do with keeping your own duckling out of
puddles.”

“What have you got now to say against
Jenny?” demanded Mrs. Devine, forgetting
even her minister in defending her daughter.

Mrs. Chester had nothing special to say
against Jenny; so she changed her front
once more.

“And what have you got to say against
Kate's going to Washington?” she asked.

“I have much to say against it,” replied
Mrs. Devine, with the bland but annoying
firmness of people who know that they are
doing their duty. “I think it would be
very wrong to take her into the gay world
just when her heart has been softened by
the death of dear, good old Colonel Kershaw.
I think that I am bound, as her
friend, and as one who wishes her highest
good, to bear my testimony against any such
step.”

Mrs. Chester would hear no more. She
was quite unable to restrain the nervous
irritability which of late perpetually gnawed
her, and set her flying not only at her fellow
“humans,” but also at cats and dogs,
and even at things inanimate. She broke
out in such a fit of passion as one seldom
sees in a lady outside of a lunatic aylum.

“I know what you mean by your pious
talk, Sally Devine,” she chattered. “You
want to keep Kate here so that your stick
of a minister can court her. You are stark
crazy about that pale-faced, white-eyed,
white-livered creature. You know that
Kate Beaumont is the best match in the
district, and you want her money and niggers
to support him. O, you need n't make
eyes at me as if I were breaking all the Ten
Commandments at once. I don't care if he
is a clergyman. I don't like him. I don't
like his looks. He has a white liver. He 's

just that kind of a man that the niggers
call a white-livered man. And he 's a poor
stick of a minister. When he looks at the
daughter of Peyton Beaumont, he looks
altogether too high for him. Kate Beaumont
is for his betters. She is fit for any
planter or any politician in the State.
When you put up your little man to jumping
for her, you put him up to making himself
ridiculous.”

Mrs. Devine was dumbfounded with horror
and amazement. Mrs. Chester was
talking with a violence which even in her
was extraordinary. Not only was her language
violent, but her manner also. Her
gestures, her flashing eyes, and her loudness
of tone all showed an unwomanly and abnormal
excitement. Mrs. Devine even
thought, just for one moment, “Is she
crazy?”

“I want you to let our Beaumont affairs
entirely alone,” resumed Mrs. Chester, who
had merely paused to catch her breath.
“We are able to take care of our own
young lady. Do you take care of yours.”
At this point, remembering how much
Jenny had made of Frank McAlister some
time previous, her anger received a fresh
accession, and she added, “She needs it
enough, — the little flirt!”

Even sense of duty and of martyrdom in
a just cause could not enable Mrs. Devine
to hear more. Insulted through her daughter,
and with a sense of degradation in being
made the butt of such glarings and such
language, she rose and hurried out of the
room, crying with vexation.

We beg that the reader will not be
equally shocked, and shut his eyes upon the
very name of Mrs. Chester hereafter.
Sooner or later he will learn the true cause
of her unwomanly outbreak, and will probably
in a measure pardon her for it.

It so happened that while hastening
across the yard, Mrs. Devine met Kate
Beaumont. In the weakness of abused
femininity, suffering from instant outrage,
and remembering also how Mrs. Chester
had formerly abused Jenny to her face, the
injured woman did not wisely conceal the
cause of her weeping.

“I have been insulted by your aunt,” she
sobbed. “Insulted because I thought it
my duty to protess against your being
dragged into the vanities and follies of
Washington. I have done my duty in this
house for the last time. I am sorry, but I
can't help it.”

With these words she tore away, rushed
into her carriage, and was driven off. It
will be observed that she said nothing about
the Rev. Mr. Gilyard, either because she
thought it was right so to do, or because she
thought it was wise. Even conscientious
people, when of the illogical turn of Mrs.
Devine, are apt to indulge in such concealments,
regarded by stronger heads as prevarications.

Kate, although a hater of duelling, rencontres,
and the like, had what may be
called gentlemanly ideas of hospitality and
of honor. The fact that a Beaumont had
insulted a guest under the Beaumont roof-tree,
roused in her such indignation tha
she forgot her sorrows, forgot her melancholies,
and lost somewhat of her habitual
gentleness. As she entered the house and
advanced upon Mrs. Chester, with a marble
face and the step of a Juno, she looked
much more like her spirited sister than like
herself. For the first time in this whole
story she was angry. We regret to use the
word in connection with her, it has such
ugly associations; and yet her anger was
just, honorable, and becoming.

“Aunt Marian,” she said, “I hear that
you have been attacking Mrs. Devine, and
because of my affairs.”

“I did not,” asserted Aunt Marian.

“I do not know what to make of this,”
replied Kate, steadily gazing into Mrs. Chester's
wandering eyes. “Mrs. Devine tells
me that you had words with her about my
going to Washington.”

Mrs. Chester had at first been strangely
afraid of her niece. But as the girl stood
there calling her to account, she became
suddenly very angry with her, so angry as
to lose all her self-control and to forget her
cunning.

“Yes, I did have words with her,” she
broke out. “I let her know her place here.
She wants to prevent our going to Washington,
and to marry you to that white-livered
minister. I let her know that she was
an interfering gossip. I did, and I will
again.”

“Aunt Marian, this cannot be,” said
Kate, speaking with the steadiness of a
Fate. “This is my father's house, and
guests cannot be insulted in it. If you do
not write an apology to Mrs. Devine, I shall
lay the whole matter before him.”

“Will you go to Washington?” was Mrs.
Chester's only answer.

“I am not going to Washington,” decreed
Kate.

“Then I won't stay here another day,”
declared Mrs. Chester in loud anger. “I
won't stay here to be ground down and
insulted. I 'll go and keep house for Bent
Armitage.”

Kate did not believe her. She was
mainly occupied in wondering at the woman's
unusual excitement. She decided
that time would be the best medicine for it,
and that for the present she would say nothing
more to irritate her. When Mrs. Chester
should come to herself, and should get
over her disappointment about the collapse

[ILLUSTRATION]

"I am driven from my brother's house by my brother's children," answered Mrs. Chester.—Page 149.

[Description: 456EAF. Image of a woman holding two pieces of luggage and looking skyward, as a moustached man seated at a table and smoking watches her with a slight grin.]

of the Washington project, she would probably
have a mild turn and send an apology
to Mrs. Devine. So trusting, Kate left her.

But the next morning Mrs. Chester slyly
set off for Saxonburg with bag and baggage,
alighting upon the hospitality of the astonished
Bentley Armitage, who was keeping
bachelor's hall in his brother's house. And
there, inspired perhaps by a bee in her bonnet,
she commenced making fresh trouble
for Beaumonts and McAlisters.