An Arkansas Planter. Opie Percival Read
to my looks, eh? Why, I have broken more than one heart."
"Why, I didn't know you had been married but once."
He winced. "Look here, you mustn't talk that way."
"But you began it. You called me a young rabbit."
"That's right, and now we will call it off. What a memory you've got. I gad, once joke with a woman and her impudence—which she mistakes for wit—leaps over all difference in ages. But they are laying for you at home and you are going to catch it. I laughed at them; told them it was nonsense to suppose that the smartest girl in the state was going to marry—"
"You've said enough. I don't need your championship."
"But you've got it and can't help yourself. Why, so far as brains are concerned, the average legislator can't hold a candle to you."
"That's no compliment."
"Slow. I was in the legislature."
"Yes, one term, I hear."
"Why did you hear one term?"
"Because they didn't send you back, I suppose."
"Easy. But I tell you that the Major and your mother are furious. Your mother said—"
"She said very little in your presence."
"Careful. She said a great deal. But I infer from your insinuation that she doesn't think very well of me."
"You ought to know."
"I do; I know that she is wrong in her estimate of me. And I also know that I am right in my estimate of her. She is the soul of gentleness and quiet dignity. But you like me, don't you?"
"I am ashamed to say that I like you in spite of my judgment."
"Easy. That's good, I must say. Ah, the influence I have upon people is somewhat varied. Upon a certain type of woman, the dignified lady of a passing generation, I exercise no particular influence, but I catch the over-bright young women in spite of themselves. The reason you think so much of me is because you are the brightest young woman I ever saw. And this puts me at a loss to understand why you are determined to marry that fellow Pennington. Wait a moment. I gad, if you go I'll ride along with you. Answer me one question: Is your love for him so great that you'll die if you don't marry him? Or is it that out of a perversity that you can't understand you are determined to throw away a life that could be made most useful? Louise, we have joked with each other ever since you were a child. In my waddling way I have romped with you, and I can scarcely realize that you are nearly twenty-four years old. Think of it, well advanced toward the age of discretion, and yet you are about to give yourself to a dying man. I don't know what to say."
"It seems not," she replied. And after a moment's pause she added: "If I am so well advanced toward the age of discretion I should be permitted to marry without the advice of an entire neighborhood."
She was now standing in the sun, looking up at him, her half-closed eyes glinting like blue-tempered steel.
"Is marriage wholly a matter of selfishness?" she asked.
"Slow. If you are putting that to me as a direct question I am, as a man who never shies at the truth, compelled to say that it is. But let me ask you if it is simply a matter of accommodation? If it is, why not send out a collection of handsome girls to marry an aggregation of cripples?"
Her eyes were wide open now and she was laughing. "No one could be serious with you, Mr. Gid."
"And no one could make you serious with yourself."
"Frog."
"Young rabbit."
She put her hands to her ears. "I would rather be a young rabbit than a frog."
"Wait a moment," he called as she turned away.
"Well."
"When you go home I wish you'd tell your mother that I talked to you seriously concerning the foolishness of your contemplated marriage. Will you do that much for your old playmate?"
She made a face at him and trippingly hastened away. He looked after her, shook his head, gathered up his bridle reins, and jogged off toward his home.
CHAPTER V.
At home Louise made known her arrival by singing along the hallway that led to her room. She knew that not a very pleasant reception awaited her, and she was resolved to meet it with the appearance of careless gayety. She entered her room, drew back the curtains to admit the light, deftly touched her hair at the mirror, and sat down in a rocking chair. She took up a book, an American fad built upon a London failure, and was aimlessly turning the leaves when she heard her mother's voice.
"Are you in there, Louise?"
"Yes, come."
In the mother's appearance there was no suggestion of a stored rebuke; her gray hair, faultlessly parted, was smoothed upon her brow, her countenance bespoke calmness, and her sad eyes were full of tender love.
"Oh, you look so cool and sweet," said the girl. "Have this chair."
"No, thank you, I prefer to sit here."
She sat upon a straight-back chair. In her "day" only grandmothers were supposed to sit in rockers; younger women were thought to preserve their health and their grace of form by sitting with rigid dignity upon chairs which might now be exhibited as relics of household barbarism.
"Did you have a pleasant visit?" the girl asked.
"Yes, very; but it was so warm over there under the hills that I was glad when the time came to leave."
"Does that Englishman still live alone on the Jasper place?"
"Yes, with his straight pipe and Scotch whisky. Perdue says that he appears to be perfectly contented there all alone."
"Have they found out anything about him?"
"No, only what he has been pleased to tell, and that isn't much. It seems that he is the younger son of a good family strayed off from home to better his condition."
"But why should he try to raise cotton when they say there is so little money in it, and especially when it requires experience? And the climate must be trying on him?"
"No, he says that the climate agrees with him. He has lived in India. He is reading American history and is much taken with the part the South has borne, so I learned from Mr. Perdue. He did not expect to find so little prejudice against foreigners. I could have told him that, in the South, an Englishman is scarcely looked upon as a foreigner—that is, among the best people."
They talked about many things that concerned them but little, of a new steamboat that had just entered upon the commerce of the lower river, of a cotton gin that was burned the night before, of the Catholic priest who had come to gather the negroes into his church; and surely they were far from a mention of Pennington. But suddenly Louise moved with uneasiness, for she had caught something that had not been said, that had not been looked, and, springing to her feet, she almost threw herself upon her mother, and with her arms about her, she cried: "Please don't say a word; please don't. I can argue with father, but I can't argue with you, for you take everything so to heart and suffer so much. Please don't speak anybody's name—don't say that father has said anything to you about anybody. You mustn't cry, either. Leave it all to me, and if I was born to wring your dear heart—there, let us hush."
She straightened up, putting the hair out of her eyes, and the silent and stately woman sat there with the tears rolling down her face. "Please don't, mother. You'll make me think I'm the meanest creature in the world. And I don't know but that I am, but I can't help it. Just call me unnatural, as you have done so many times, and let it all go. There, just listen at father walking up and down the porch; and