"Work Benson for all he is worth," wrote Ellesworth on some blue club-paper, "and give him until the first of December."

The first of December came, but no South Carolina interest. Francis Ellesworth was greatly annoyed and told Todd so plainly.

"He is sick," explained Todd. "Somebody else wrote for him. The letter came the other day. But he signed it. He asks for another fifteen days."

Ellesworth frowned.

"I'm deuced hard up just now," he said, "Christmas is coming on. That would just settle my flower bill. Halvin has sent me three confoundedly gentlemanly bills. That's the worst of it. Write and tell Benson I'll give him until the fifteenth of December--not another day."

"Just as you say," answered Todd. "It's all safe enough, but it will take some time to realize. Cherokee isn't exactly booming, but he's got fifty acres and one half cleared, the other half is heavy yellow pine.

The timber is worth the whole amount, my correspondent a.s.sures me, besides the house and out-buildings. You won't lose, not a cent, I'll guarantee; but it's annoying, I will admit."

Then they fell to talking about the Yale foot-ball victory. Of course they talked late and Ellesworth walked to his apartments in a heavy shower.

That night, one of the catastrophes which prove demons or angels to our lives, occurred to the young man. He was taken suddenly and violently ill. Of the three physicians summoned by the excited janitor, to prescribe for the sickness, one called the case pneumonia; another preferred malaria; and the third, having just delivered an original paper on the subject, suggested brain grippe. In only one respect the three wise men agreed--their patient must spend the winter in the South. Oddly enough, they recommended Sunshine, South Carolina; and as Sunshine is a fashionable resort, with plenty of hotels and tennis and girls, Ellesworth found no difficulty in obeying the medical counsel.

Thus in ten days he found himself in the land of the palmetto and the j.a.ponica. It was an abrupt change, and therefore all the more natural for that. The other day an invalid started for India on an eighteen hours' notice.

Ellesworth's illness and the journey had entirely driven the Benson matter out of his mind. He had drawn upon an emergency fund for his trip, and the fact that he was sixty dollars short had escaped his easy memory. Therefore the further announcement from Todd that Benson could not pay at the date agreed upon came to him as a new shock. Todd had written a formal letter to his cla.s.smate, merely stating the fact and asking for instructions. As Ellesworth read it, he had a vague feeling that there was something behind that was not told. But he had just lost a game of billiards to an inferior player, and felt cross.

"Confound that Benson!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. Then he sat down and wrote: "Foreclose at once. My attorneys, Squeeze & Claw, will give you the Benson trust deeds on presentation of this. Hurry it through as soon as you can."

He heaved a sigh of relief, and lighted a cigar with Todd's letter.

There are critics who a.s.sert that the modern story fails of its mission unless it deals in extraordinary characters embedded like the rare crystals of Hiddenite, in an extraordinary matrix; and that the public, tired to suffocation of its own commonplaces, has a right to expect something out of the usual run. If such a _dictum_ were final Francis Ellesworth is in nowise a fit hero for a "penny-dreadful," nor was it even an extraordinary circ.u.mstance that made him inquire how far Cherokee Garden was from Sunshine.

"You can go by railroad," answered the Northern clerk, "or you can go horseback. It's only eight miles by road through the pines. It's a very pretty ride to take before dinner."

Ellesworth had two reasons for amusing himself by an easy trip to Cherokee. He had a vague feeling of remorse which often follows the decree of justice. Lincoln was made ill by being obliged to refuse a pardon. The greater the power the heavier it hangs upon the heart.

Ellesworth, as he entertained himself in the conventional way, ever spending, never earning, began to feel that he had done a brutal thing, without even looking into the circ.u.mstances, to order a man's home sold over his head, because he had failed to pay interest for the first time. If Benson's farm were only eight miles away why did he not see him before he sent the command to foreclose? There was an atonement owing, and this feeling, rising like a mist in the mind of the young man, who knew much of pleasure and little of misery, drew him to the mortgaged plantation. And then, if Benson did prove a shiftless fellow, he wanted to see what kind of a place he might be soon forced to own. He might make it his winter resort and come down there every year. The more selfish thought reinforced the generous one, and piqued his curiosity, as he rode slowly into the wilderness, leaving Sunshine and its fashionable savor behind.

It was a December morning. To one not used to the tropics, the sun, the heat, the greenness, the exhilaration were magical. Under what cold comforter was Boston Common shivering on this winter day! What pneumonic gales roared up Beacon Street and gnashed through Commonwealth Avenue, seeking whom they might devour, and having not a great way to go! How blue the street vendors looked--the Italian boys who gilded statuettes on Tremont Street, and the man under the old courthouse who offers to clean your gloves of the unpardonable sin--for five cents! How the fellows shivered as they stamped the snow off in the club vestibule!

The wonder that New England is not depopulated when there is such an Eden in which to spend the devastating winter! So Ellesworth thought as he jogged along the uneven, sandy road, congratulating himself with every deep breath, and sitting straight and straighter in the saddle. He had never felt so happy and so free as he did this December morning.

Pa.s.sing slowly by a deserted orchard, he could see the yellow larks flying from tree to tree, and could hear the robins and the cat-birds calling each other names, and mocking each other merrily. Now and then he stopped his horse to watch a couple of quails leisurely hopping across the road, and strained his ears to hear their thrum as they were startled in the thicket. The very air seemed happy. Care and illness slipped away as the sunshine slipped on the faces of the leaves. It was December? No, it was summer with something thrown in that is never present in our Northern June.

Ellesworth galloped along until his horse stumbled into a mud-hole.

Before him, in a hollow, a stream had to be forded in the usual Southern way. Above and beyond, a cabin could be seen from whose outside chimney smoke arose in a perpendicular column. c.o.c.ks crew in the distance, and there was every indication that the outskirts of Cherokee were represented in the hut before him. As Ellesworth halted in the deepest part of the brook, allowing his horse to drink, he saw cl.u.s.ters of mistletoe on the tops of slender trees. The dark green of this romantic parasite set against the gray of the trees and their moss formed a new picture for the Northerner. The glistening mistletoe with its white berries recalled scenes that he had read about. Ellesworth had played too lightly with life to have ever been seriously in love. The flirtation of a few weeks or months and the solemn tenderness of devoted love are not allied. The one pa.s.ses into the other as seldom as silicon pa.s.ses into the cells of a fallen tree. Ellesworth had never gone beyond conventional devotion: and this he had so far discreetly given to married women. This emblem of Christmas troth actually growing before his eyes, and seen by him in its native state for the first time, produced a vague longing upon the young New Englander. He remembered a precise and beautiful Boston girl, rich enough and all that, whom he had vainly tried to consider in the light of a possible wife. What well-bred surprise would she have poured upon him if he had attempted to claim the right of the mistletoe branch! He had waited in order to give and receive spontaneous, unconventional tokens of affection. He had dreamed of walking in the fields by the side of the phantom he loved, clasping her hand and swinging it with his, just like children in Arcadia. He wanted no wife who would accept her husband's kiss as a matter of necessity. He had seen them, and cynically watched the husband casting furtive, longing looks at her who swore to cherish him unto death.

Thus spoke the chaste, the alluring mistletoe to his heart. These thoughts surprised him, and he hurried along in vague discomfort over the little slope (the natives called it a hill) and up to the straggling village, called in his papers of description Cherokee Garden for no earthly reason whatever.

"Is this Cherokee Garden?" he asked of the wrinkled white woman sitting in the doorway of the solitary suburban residence.

"This ain't the hull of it, young man," she answered severely, taking her corn-cob pipe out of her mouth and looking at Ellesworth as if he had cast an aspersion upon a city. "Ye kin ride down the road a right smart bit until ye come to the kyars. The post office is on the other side o' the track." This she said with an accent of resentment.

"Do you know where a man called William Benson lives, whom I understand has a--a farm here somewhere?"

When Ellesworth had finished his question the old woman got up and, supported by her stick, tottered to his side, and peered up into his face.

"Air ye any kin ter Bill Benson? Air ye an'thin' to him?"

"No, no," stammered Ellesworth, taken aback. "I only wanted to call on him. Why?"

"Ye'll hev'ter go right smart ways to find Bill Benson," replied the old woman, grimly.

She peered up into his face again, and shook her head. Ellesworth, wondering whether his creditor had "skipped to Cuba to avoid payment,"

awaited information.

"Bill Benson" (she stopped to take a whiff, and then proceeded with a tone of awe caught from Methodist preachers) "hez gone to glory!"

"Where?" asked Boston, ignorant of the longitude and lat.i.tude of that strange place.

"To glory, young man!" repeated the old woman, impressively. "Elder Jones buried Bill in Tantallon buryin' ground, four mile from hyar down the track," added the woman, severely.

Her voice dropped to a whisper on the last words, and she looked to see their effect upon the horseman. The red handkerchief, tied over her head and under her chin, had fallen down behind her neck and revealed a bald head. The c.o.c.k crew from the step of the hut.

Benson dead! This, then, accounted for the note so long overdue. Benson had been sick, and could not pay. Why had Ellesworth not known this before? He reddened with self-reproach. This was the first tragedy which he had stumbled upon, and how much of it was his own doing! The old woman looked at him suspiciously.

"When did he die?" he asked softly.

The woman counted backwards on her fingers with the stem of her pipe.

"Right smart onto two weeks," she answered after much calculation. Then she shot this question at him with a scowl, "Ye hain't no Northerner, air ye?"

Taken off his guard, Ellesworth hesitated, and then forswore his section.

"I--I am living at--eh--Sunshine."

Her face lighted.

"Mebbe ye'r raised in Charleston. Ye look like a South Carolinian."

Ellesworth was drawn to it by some occult power, and nodded a.s.sent. The old woman's manner was now totally different, and she approached him confidentially, and offered him the use of her tin snuff-box, which he courteously declined.

"Ye haint heerd, so Colonel Tom Garvin told me, that a dum Northerner hez got a holt on Bill's place; and there ain't none left now 'cept Georgy and Mrs. McCorkle as is a widder nigh on ten year. Colonel Tom is kin to her mother's second cousin, and he says thet thet dum Yankee hed better not show up 'round these parts, for he'd get plugged if he tries to take Bill's place away from Georgy, poor, innercent thing that she is." The old woman's cracked voice thrilled with the pa.s.sion and tenderness of her kind; but Ellesworth did not look at her as she finished. He felt a little frightened, and he bent over his horse to fleck a bit of bark with his whip to conceal it.

"How far do they live from here?" he asked after a pause, which she interpreted as actuated by sympathy.

"'Tain't no fur at all. Ye take the next turn to yer left. It's the first plantation ye come to. I reckon ye'll see Georgy a dustin' and sweepin'. She's almighty pertikler, she is, poor creetur."

Ellesworth thanked the old woman dreamily and rode in the direction which she pointed out.

Ellesworth had never thought of this view of the subject. It never occurred to him that he would be an object of hatred in Cherokee Garden.

He glanced around furtively, as if he expected to see an enemy hiding behind the trees. At any rate, so far, he was not known. He made up his mind that he should not be. Benson's daughter was undoubtedly a sallow, withered young girl, with a hot temper and a deep sense of injury; and, if she found out his ident.i.ty would probably call the country to arms against him. But the Yankee had no idea of giving up his rights. His hands tightened on reins and whip. He meant to see the plantation that was mortgaged in his name at any cost. But about one thing he was now certain. Cherokee would never be a winter resort for him.

He walked his horse to the cross-road, to the left, about a thousand yards or so, until he came in front of a house. He halted and looked at it long and critically. It was a two-story house, built of yellow pine, that had not been painted. In spite of this, it did not look neglected.

It had an air of scrupulous neatness and care. Around the house ran a simple fence, made to keep the chickens and the pigs that swarmed about him, from the garden and the piazza. A huge rose-bush covered one whole side of the house, while in the garden and on the veranda red and white j.a.ponicas were in flower. Flanking the walk from the gate to the house, high azalea bushes were pushing forth their buds for the spring blooming, and little borders of box protected with wooden boards, and bunches of holly intersected the little garden. It was more than a home-like looking place: it was fascinatingly cozy, with its roses and camellias and azaleas and a single protecting palmetto, and over-towering live oaks, and majestic pines. It was just the place Ellesworth had dreamed of possessing. It was luxuriant; it was tropical.

The air, semi-spiced with odors of gum and blooms mounted to his brain like a narcotic. He sat upon his horse and looked about. His eyes roamed past the house and caught the contrast of the unkempt fields with the neatness within the enclosure. He noted the olive fingers of the high pines beyond the ploughed land.

It was a fair and a sad sight--William Benson was not there to enjoy his home.