True and Other Stories Part 2

At the peace he retired from the struggle poor, and ill fitted to make his way by other means than the sword. He settled in the South, where the soil was not favorable for such a man as he. What little property he possessed was soon lost. Moreover, he and his children having surrendered to the reigning prejudice against work, there was no way open to a retrieval of even the meagre comfort they had at first commanded. The family, failing to make any advantageous alliance by marriage--which, indeed, would scarcely have been possible in their circ.u.mstances--soon declined into still deeper poverty. The Major died, followed by all his children excepting one son, who drifted across the border into North Carolina; and his posterity became a part of that strange population known as "poor whites."

Listless and inefficient as those people are, germs of energy are known to have been fostered among them, which have sometimes developed; and the De Vines always retained enough of their ancestral vigor to counteract their ancestral pride, as well as their sense of unmerited misfortune, and to keep them somewhat above the general hopeless prostration of the cla.s.s into which they had fallen.

Aunty Losh, widowed by the Rebellion, and left childless, had settled in the little hut on the headland, with her two nephews, mere boys at the time, but now grown to efficient manhood. The elder one, Dennis, was stalwart and courageous, and became a successful fisherman on a small scale. Sylvester had also a.s.sisted in the common support, and together they had made a little headway. But in Sylvester the ambition for something higher had awaked: he had not only learned to read, but had actually become a student, and was now taking steps toward what seemed to his aunt and brother the attainment of a distant and dangerous witchcraft--namely, making himself a lawyer. Neither of them believed that he would ever accomplish this chimerical design, but Sylvester's scheme was always present to them in the guise of an impending danger, which was just as dreadful as if it had been realized. In fact, it was worse, because it seemed to them a spell in which he had been caught, and to which his life would ultimately be sacrificed. They regarded him with the mingled envy and commiseration that we are apt to bestow upon those who have the strength to devote themselves to an idea which we think is going to prove a failure.

Dennis, on the contrary, had never troubled himself to learn anything beyond that which his own instinct and contact with the forces around him could teach. There was a vague tradition stored up in the dust-heaps of Aunty Losh's mind, to the effect that his ancestor, the Major, had once at the siege of Savannah cut his way through the British with a detachment of Pulaski's Legion, and that in so doing he had slain with his own hand eleven of the enemy. Well, it was with the same sort of desperate rush that Dennis cut his way through the problems of existence. He was good for a short, sharp struggle, but he was not steady, and had no ability to plan long manoeuvres or patient campaigns.

A streak of fierceness remained in him, also, derived from the man who had been so deadly to his enemies when placed in a perilous dilemma. As there were no British opposed to him, it did not manifest itself in just the same way; and, thus far, being temperate in his habits and having no foes so far as any one knew, he had not slain anybody. But his pa.s.sionate impulses a.s.serted themselves plainly enough at times, to the discomfort not only of others, but also of himself.

Here they were, then, these three people, the remote offspring of that old Revolutionary officer, living humbly on the North Carolina sh.o.r.e, unlike as possible to what Major De Vine might at one time have supposed his descendants would be, yet bearing his blood in their veins, and acting out every day his traits or those of some still earlier progenitor, with as much exactness as if what they did and said had been a part written for them in a play.

They knew nothing about the romance of Guy Wharton and Gertrude Wylde, so far back, so musty with age as it seems, yet so alive and fragrant, I think, when we pluck it out from the crumbled ruins of the past where it grew. They knew nothing of the deposit of stones in the waters up by Shallowbag Point, near Roanoke, which--being of foreign character--are probably the ballast of one of Raleigh's vessels thrown overboard there, in the stress of weather; nothing, except that Dennis had learned to steer clear of it at low tide. But when you consider the destiny that had befallen the family of the gallant young Revolutionary fighter, how much did it differ from that of the English colonists whose race had been extinguished in savagery? The change which had taken place was, essentially, of the same kind.

CHAPTER III.

TWILIGHT.

When the group at Aunty Losh's cabin had finished what they had to say, Adela Reefe rose to go; and Dennis, taking his gun from a corner of the room, prepared as a matter of course to accompany her.

"Sun'll be goin' down," he remarked, languidly, "by the time I'm a-comin' back, and I'll have a right smart call to get a few birds."

"I wish ye was goin' t'other way," Aunty Losh said, fretfully. "Ye mout see suthin' o' Sylv. It's quare he don't come 'long when he knows his old aunty's a-waitin' for him."

"Oh, he's young, aunty. You got to give him some play," said Dennis, with fine sarcasm, though he knew well enough that his younger brother was more mature and better balanced than he.

But his demeanor underwent a change as soon as he had pa.s.sed out of the doorway with Adela. The air of lazy jesting disappeared; his face became earnest, and he walked with a kind of meekness beside the girl, looking at her guardedly with a devotion that did not lose the grace of a single motion of her lithe figure. Leaving the headland, they took the direction of Hunting Quarters, a fis.h.i.+ng village several miles distant, where Adela lived alone with her father, a nondescript personage depending for his livelihood upon equally nondescript and fragmentary lore of a supposed medical character. Old Reefe, to say truth, was held in awe by some of the simple neighborhood folk, as a man possessed of mysterious and magical powers.

The two had gone some distance without speaking, when Dennis began abruptly: "I got somethin' to say to ye, Deely, what I was waitin' to say till aunty come back. It didn't seem everyways fair to say it afore."

"What in time is it wouldn't be fair for you to say to me, Dennie?" she asked, turning her face quickly toward him, her lips parted in a smile, or perhaps only in eagerness.

"Why, when you was comin' over, tendin' me and Sylv and the cabin, it didn't look like it was right," Dennis said. "But now there's a free course, and I want to lay for home."

"That's a good word," Adela threw in, seeing him pause.

"Yes, and you know what I'm after. I want ye to say when you'll marry me."

Deely, at this, was quick to avert her glance. She remained silent.

"Well, what's in the wind now?" he persisted. "Ain't ye goin' to pa.s.s me an answer?"

"What _can_ I say to you?" she returned, earnestly. "I love you, Dennie, as I told you long ago; and I want to be your wife. But where are we to go? What have we got to live on?"

Adela's speech varied from the customary manner of the locality to a more precise and refined utterance, according to her mood; for she had shared in Sylv's progress to the extent of taking lessons from him in reading. This had caused her to observe Miss Jessie Floyd's p.r.o.nunciation, and that of the few other cultivated persons whom she occasionally saw, so that she had learned to copy it. The instant she found herself in opposition to Dennis, she unconsciously a.s.sumed that superior accent, the effect of which upon him was by no means mollifying.

"Oh, don't go for to go on that tack now!" he exclaimed. "I've hearn enough on it a'ready. I mean squar' talk now, and I ain't goin' to be fooled, neither."

"Answer _my_ question, then," said the girl, peremptorily. "That's no more than fair."

"Why, there ain't no trouble," Dennis a.s.sured her, becoming amiable again. "I reckon we can make out to live together as well as we can separate one from t'other."

"How?"

"Just like we do now. 'Pears to me the fish 'll bite as easy when they know they've got to make a dinner for we uns, stead o' for Aunty and Sylv, and the tarrapin 'll walk up to be cotched, and ground-nuts and rice 'll allays be plenty."

"Yes, yes, Dennie; but who's goin' to take keer of Aunty Losh?" said Adela, dropping back into the easier way of talking.

The young man's face fell, and he wrinkled his forehead. "That's a fact; that's a fact," he murmured, sadly. "Poor ole aunty! She's been a true mammy to we uns, and it ain't nachul to leave her be by herself. But Sylv mout take keer on her, Deely."

"Sylv's younger than you," she objected. "'Tain't his portion to do that."

"Mebbe he ar young," said Dennis; "but he's got a darn'd sight cuter head, some ways, than I have. And you mind now what I say, Deely, this hyar thing has got to stop one o' these hyar days. If it hadn't been for Sylv's mopin' over them books, and a-glowerin' and tryin' to make his self too wise, I'd a-been a heap better fixed."

"But Sylv wouldn't a-been," was the answer; "and he's worth thinkin' on a little."

Dennis laughed scornfully. "A little! He's a heap too much wuth thinkin'

on."

Adela ceased walking, and faced round upon him, at the same time brus.h.i.+ng away with one hand a tress of her crispy black hair, which the wind had blown across her eyes. She wanted to meet his gaze directly.

"What do you mean by that?" she demanded.

Dennis was her match for belligerency. "I mean," he said, "that that ar youngster takes up too much 'tention. Thar ar'n't no time for considerin' on no one else. It's allays Sylv's ways and Sylv's idees, and he can't do nothin' for himself, but some one else hev got to do it for him. An' here am I, one month arter another, findin' the ways for him and aunty to live, lettin' alone myself; whiles he goes smellin'

arter them old books what's made o' yaller hide that ain't no better than the skin off'n our Sukey's back. An' that's whar the bits and the dollars go, that you and I might be enjoyin' if 'twarn't for his dog-goned concayt of lawyer's jawin' and politics and parla_ments_.

That's what! An' I'm tired on it, I tell ye. What I mean?" Here the young fellow's handsome, free-colored face became clouded with pa.s.sion that darkened it as with the shadows of a thunder-cloud. "I mean, Deely, that if you are a-goin' to put Sylv up agin me, every chance comes along, thinkin' o' his good and not o' mine, ye're not nigh so lovin' o'

me as ye are o' him. D'ye un'stan' me, now?"

Adela shrank back slightly, as if he had levelled a sudden blow at her.

Then she replied: "If that's all ye got to say to me, Dennie De Vine, ye can just go back on your tracks to the cabin, and I'll go to the Quarters alone."

Dennis forgot his anger in anxiety. "But there's the tide-way ye can't cross," he said.

"I've done it afore now, by myself," replied the girl. "'Twant for nothin' you learned me to row and sail. Ah, Dennie"--her under-lip trembled as she spoke--"it ar'n't right in you to treat me so. If you'd only remember those times when we were children! You was always good to me, then. Why ar'n't you good to me now? I feel just the same about you as I did in those way-off days. I never loved any but you--and old dad."

The poor child's head was drooping, as she finished; and, but for pride, she would have wept.

"All right, then, Deely," began Dennis. "If that's so, I'm sorry--I started for to say, I'm glad. Only, give me your squar' promise that you won't let him stand in the way no more. I've kept my hand to the helm, and I've waited. I've been waitin' a long time. Sylv won't never be no 'count, if he go on as he ar', and we won't be no 'count, nuther. Only say the word that you'll marry me soon, and that you ain't goin' to let Sylv stand in the way."

"But you said I cared more for him than I do for you," Adela objected, less inclined to make peace than before.

"Well then, you can say you don't," he suggested.

"No, I'll never tell you so!" she cried, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng. She laid a hand upon her bosom, which was heaving. "There's somethin' here, Dennie, makes it hard to say it. I can't! I can't!"

What she intended by this was no more than that, if he could not trust her without such a.s.surance, it was impossible for her to speak. But Dennis took it quite otherwise.