Kate Beaumont :: :: University of Virginia Library

Having made inquiry in the village after
Bentley Armitage, and having learned positively
that that unhappy young man had
gone to parts unknown, he went alone to
the Beaumont place with his calumets and
his wampums.

There had been an appointment, but,
watches disagreeing, Peyton had miscalculated
his visitor's arrival, and was at his
stables, with all his sons and not far from
half his negroes, inspecting a newly purchased
racer.

It was Kate Beaumont who received and
welcomed Frank McAlister's father. She
had learned that he was coming, and learned
or guessed that it was in peace. In spite of
her conscientious struggles to be calm, in
spite of the spiritual melancholy which had
settled upon her, she was in a state of feverish
excitement. Would there be a renewal
of amity? Would the dry bones of feelings
and expectations which she believed to
be dead clothe themselves again with life

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and stand upon their feet, a mighty army?
How the questions, the doubts, the hopes,
the scruples, the self-reproaches, the longings,
the fears, and still the hopes again,
thronged through her spirit! Impossible to
give more than a feeble and vague idea of
the contest which agitated her soul and
caused her very flesh to tremble. One word
she kept repeating, “I have given him up,
given him up”; repeated it with self-abasement,
with desperation. Nevertheless she
went forth to greet his father.

When the Judge met her in the veranda,
he saw a girl who had not slept the night
before, and who was even then striving to
lay her heart upon the altar of a Moloch,
but whose face was so colored, and whose
eyes so brightened by fever that she looked
the picture of health.

“My dear young lady!” he said, the exclamation
being actually forced from him
by his amazement at a beauty which was
even more wonderful now than formerly,
because more spiritual. “I consider it a
good omen that you should be the first to
meet me,” he added in the flush of his enthusiasm.

“You have my earnest thanks for this
visit, sir,” she replied, pressing his hand fervently,
and then dropping it suddenly, with
a strange mixture of impulse and self-repression.

“Heaven bless you, my dear young lady!”
said the Judge, still in a sort of daze as he
bowed gigantically over her, wondering and
admiring. “You show your native goodness
in divining me,” he continued, regaining
his intellectual self-possession. “I have
come for peace.”

She led him into the parlor with the air
of a dethroned and sorrowing but resigned
queen, receiving a king who brings sympathy.
Her fine figure rendered only the
more willowy and elegant by emaciation
and by her closely clinging black dress, she
was an incarnation of grace.

“I have but one regret,” she sighed, her
eyes turning upward sadly as if seeking her
grandfather.

“Miss Beaumont, I share it,” he answered,
understanding her with a quickness which
did him honor. “I wish John Kershaw
could have seen this day.”

“I wish so,” whispered Kate, almost inaudibly.

The Judge rose to his feet and took both
her hands tenderly, while a dimness came
into his eyes as of half-born tears.

“My dear child, you have my very heart's
sympathies,” he said. “What a man he
was! What a loss!”

Kate bowed; she could not answer; she
could not look at him. She bowed very
low, let fall a few bright drops upon the
carpet, and left the room. When she had
gone, the ponderous Judge took a large
white handkerchief out of a capacious pocket,
slowly wiped away something which obscured
his sight, and murmured, “Poor —
beautiful — creature!”

As soon as Beaumont learned that McAlister
had arrived, he hurried to meet him
with such speed that he entered the parlor
quite out of breath. To honor the occasion
and the visitor, he had dressed himself with
scrupulous care. He had on a blue dress-coat
with gilt buttons, a buff vest also with
gilt buttons, and buff kerseymere trousers
tightly strapped under the instep, as was
the fashion of the time. The strong colors,
so suggestive of military uniform, perfectly
became his bold, trooper-like, officer-like
expression and the dark ruddiness, almost
as deep as mahogany, of his complexion.
His costume contrasted with the solemn
black of the Judge, much as his impetuous
character contrasted with the other's deliberate
subtlety.

“I beg your pardon, Judge, for making
you wait a single instant,” were Peyton's
first words, at the same time cordially giving
his hand.

“I have not waited,” said McAlister, with
a certain grave emotion. “I have been
gratified, honored by an interview with your
youngest daughter.”

“I am glad that she was here to receive
you,” returned Beaumont, bowing thanks
for the compliment to his child.

“She is a wonderful woman,” declared
the Judge, momentarily forgetting the object
of his visit. “I thought I knew her
already; but she always astonishes me. I
have never seen in any other person such
expression of feeling and character. She
spoke of her grandfather in a way —”

The Judge stopped. Beaumont bent his
head as if beside a grave.

“Lamentable tragedy!” resumed McAlister.
“Mr. Beaumont, I hope it will be the
last in the history of our families.”

The Judge, profoundly in earnest, was
talking above himself. It was the contagion
of Kate Beaumont's tender nobility of soul,
quite as much as a consciousness of the
weighty importance of the occasion, which
thus elevated him. His host looked at him
with surprise and respect, and answered
fervently, “I sincerely hope and trust so.”

He too, as well as McAlister, was at his
moral zenith. He was quite aware that this
was one of the most impressive and important
moments of his life. Its gravity exalted
and purified him; he showed it in his
deportment and utterance. Throughout the
whole interview he exhibited not one violent
impulse, not one start of his characteristic
eccentricity of feeling, not one amusing
trait of unconscious humor. Never before,
at least not since his days of youthful diffidence,

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had he been such a calm, contained
gentleman as he was during this scene.

“Mr. Beaumont, I am your debtor,” resumed
McAlister, remembering that he had
come to return thanks.

“I have fulfilled my promise. Let us say
no more about it.”

“I must say this, that I owe you my earnest
gratitude, and give it.”

“Judge, your merit has at last been acknowledged,
at least in part. That is all.”

Considering the life-history of these two
men, it was surely a grand, as well as perhaps
a grandiose, dialogue.

“You are very kind to express yourself
thus,” bowed the Judge. Then he fell silent.
He wanted to ask for peace. He remembered
Frank, and wanted to give him a
chance. But the feud was a very old denizen
of his heart and habits. It made the
word “peace” a hard one to mouth.

Beaumont broke the silence. He felt
that McAlister had said as much as could
be demanded of him. It was his own turn
now. His rival must be met half-way.
Moreover, his promise to Kershaw must be
kept. The two families must, if the thing
were possible, be brought into some kind of
compact, so that bloodshedding at least
should cease.

“Judge, let me be frank,” he began,
speaking slowly, like one who weighs his
words, and who speaks because he must.
“There has been a feud between your house
and mine. I propose that it shall end; that
you and I shall do our utmost to end it; that
we shall pledge our faith and character to
that work. Sir, will you give me your hand
to it?”

His face was crimson with his struggle to
say this. Judge McAlister's ashy-sallow
countenance also turned to a deep red.
Both men felt that it was a weighty agreement
to offer and to accept.

“Here is my hand,” replied the head of
the McAlisters. “Our honor is plighted.”

After this great deed had been done they
sat down, both at once, two tired and breathless
men. This making of peace had been
to them a more wearying effort than would
have been a wrestling-match.

“We shall keep this treaty,” said the
Judge, after a moment. “We never fully
and freely and in set terms made it before.”

“That was our mistake,” answered Beaumont.

He seemed absent-minded; he was thinking
of Kershaw.

“It is the spirit of my old friend who has
done this,” he presently exclaimed, rising
and walking the room. “He is stronger in
death than he was in life. God forgive me
for not having let him see this day and hear
these words.”

His martial and grim face worked with
emotion, and there was a prayerful, piteous
stare in his black eyes. The Judge rose
also, seized and wrung Peyton's hand anew,
and even patted him comfortingly on the
shoulder. He had not for years been in
such a state of tender emotion over a man.
He absolutely thought well of Beaumont,
absolutely admired him.

Soon the conversation became calmer,
turning easily to subjects of an unpathetic
nature, as is natural with masculine talk.
For a while it was mutually satisfactory;
but at last McAlister made a remark which
showed his thick-skinned nature, his born
incapacity for distinguishing what might
offend the feelings of a man of acute sensibility.

“I trust that you will be reassured before
long as to the fate of your son-in-law,” he
said. “Excuse me,” he added, perceiving
a change in his host's countenance. “I wish
to say that he could hardly be held culpable
as to the fate of our lamented friend.
So obvious an accident, you know!”

Beaumont's brow had darkened unpleasantly;
he did not want to hear about a son-in-law
whom he had despised and hated;
above all, he did not want to discuss his
character and chances with a McAlister.
For an instant it seemed as if he would
reply offensively; but after a struggle, he
smoothed his forehead and spoke softly.
What he said, however, was startling.

“He is dead, sir. I am quite reassured
as to his fate. Shot dead, sir, by some
mountaineer or other, in the Dark Corner.
Don't trouble yourself to condole with us,
sir.”

The Judge had blundered, and of course
he saw it. He bowed meekly, mumbled
some unnoticed words of apology, and
passed to other matters. But it seemed
well now not to prolong the interview;
and, having begged Beaumont to do him
the honor of a visit, he took his leave.

“Ah!” burst out Peyton, when his visitor
had got out of hearing. “How can I
get on with such a man? Even when he
means to be civil he tramples on one's soul.”

After a little, however, he recovered his
good-nature, and added, with a smile of
grim resignation, “But he will die some
day, and, for that matter, so shall I; and
perhaps our children will find each other
more endurable. I must use the rest of my
life in trying to give them a chance to
live.”

Considering the man's sensitive nature
and pugnacious habits, the resolution was
surely self-sacrificing, and showed not a little
paternal affection.

But Peyton Beaumont became more distinctly
and agreeably reconciled to the idea
of peace with the McAlisters, when Frank

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called on him. The habitually stormy
depths of his eyes grew calm, and a hospitable
smile flew like a dove to sit upon his
wide, strong mouth, as he beheld the almost
sublime stature and the handsome, gracious,
dignified countenance of this gentle giant.
Painful and humiliating as the task was to
him, he apologized for the untoward incidents
of Frank's last visit.

“It was a shameful, horrible breach of
hospitality, sir,” he said. “But you will
surely not hold us accountable, especially as
we were the greatest sufferers. That —
that scoundrel is dead, sir,” he added. “He
will make no more mischief.”

“God have mercy upon him!” Frank
murmured. Beaumont made no reply; his
nostrils were distended and his eyebrows
working; he was thinking of the dead
Kershaw and the sorrows of his daughters,
not praying for Armitage.

After some amicable dialogue, the young
man asked leave to pay his respects to the
ladies of the family.

“They will be happy to see you, sir,”
answered Beaumont, graciously. “You
will find my youngest daughter very much
changed. She has received a terrible
blow.”

So Frank perceived for himself when he
encountered Kate. It is true that the first
sight of him brought a flush to her face and
a tremulous brightness to her eyes; but in
a moment came the thought that she had
given him up, turning her to the whiteness
and coldness of marble; and presently the
tumult subsided into the calm pallor of
physical languor and of grief. Thin as she
was and faded as she was, Frank found her
more beautiful than ever. His pity for her
increased his affection magically, and he
thought that he had never before seen her so
enchanting. O, blind faithfulness of love,
admirable and enviable, deserving reward
and winning it!

Of course, in this first meeting after great
calamities, awed by the melancholy of those
eyes whose pathos made the room holy, and
still believing somewhat in the tale of the
Gilyard engagement, Frank could not
breathe a word nor throw out a look of
courtship. The interview passed in talk on
commonplace subjects, and he retired from
it so unsatisfied that he thought himself
unhappy. It had been a great joy to
look upon her once more; but he believed
that he was doomed never to win her as a
wife.

Several weeks passed without visible
change in the relations of the two young
people. But meantime Kate's health rapidly
returned to her, and brought with it a
fresh outburst of her girlish beauty. She
grew well at Hartland; she made a little
trip to Charleston, and came back still bet
ter; in two months she had recovered her
plumpness, her tints of damask rose, and
the brightness of her eyes. The moment
that life had ceased to be merely a sorrow,
it had ceased to be a disease.

As if to pile miracle on miracle, health
of body restored health of mind. The
clouds of superstitious gloom and ascetic
purpose, which had lately wrapped her in
wretchedness, rose, grew thin, dispersed,
vanished, she knew not why, she knew not
when, but utterly and forever. It was as
if a terrible enchantment had been lifted
by a spell, restoring her from cavernous
dungeons to light, from a false world of
horrors to a real world of happiness. Suddenly
and to her amazement she found herself
free; she could do what she would with
her pure heart and will and life. “No voice
nor hideous hum” of her Moloch any longer
deceived her; and she knew that her late
vows of self-sacrifice were senseless and
nugatory. Indeed, she was so perfectly
healthy in spirit that she at times asked
herself, “Have I been crazed?” No, she
had not been crazed; but she had been
near it.

It must be understood, by the way, that
Arthur Gilyard had facilitated her recovery
by keeping altogether away from her, so
that she the more easily got rid of her
impression that it was her duty to become
his wife. It was the final act of self-abnegation
in this noble spirit to seek a prompt
dismissal from his parish, and take up his
labor for souls in a distant part of the
State. It was well, no doubt, for his own
peace; but it was well also for the peace
of Kate.

Meantime, the two families remained on
friendly, and, so far as the women-folk were
concerned, on cordial terms. Mrs. McAlister
and Mary once more twined the tendrils
of their hearts around Kate, claiming
her as one whom they had a right to love
and must love. It was they who first
learned, and who quickly reported to their
son and brother, that the Rev. Arthur
Gilyard never came to the Beaumont house,
and so could not be troth-plighted to its
fairest inmate. They threw out hints of
encouragement to the young man which
sent the blood through all his six feet and
four inches of stature. These affectionate
urgencies were all the more open because
the Judge was impatient for a proposal of
marriage, and actually pushed the women
to push the boy up to it.”

“Why does n't he take advantage of the
present favorable circumstances?” said this
unsensitive old gentleman. “A woman who
is in affliction, and who of course needs
consolation, is all the more likely to accept
an offer. Depend upon it, madam, that I
know something of human nature. He

164

ought to speak at once, before any one else
comes in.”

In a modified form, made delicate and
pure by a mother's lips, these suggestions
reached Frank's ears.

“I should be so overjoyed to take such a
daughter to my heart,” said Mrs. McAlister
in a cooing, happy tone. “I think, considering
what she already knows of your feelings,
that she would not be shocked if you
should speak to her. You need not press
her for an answer; it would be best not, I
think and feel. But you certainly may tell
her that you have not changed. It would
be only fair and kind to tell her that.”

So Frank McAlister resolved to tell Kate
Beaumont that he had not changed.