The young man remembered Barbara's mother and was silent.

"Well, Barb, Mr. Fair will go home with us for a day or two, anyhow,"

Garnet was presently authorized to say. "I must go into the next car a moment----"

John March, meditating on this very speaker with growing anger, saw him approach. Garnet entered, beaming.

"Howdy, John, my son; I couldn't let you and Sister March----"

March had stepped before his mother: He spoke in a deep murmur.

"I'm not your son, sir. My mother's not your sister."

"Why, what in thun--why, John, I don't know whether to be angry or to laugh."

"Don't you dare to do either. Go back to that other man's----"

"Speak more softly for heaven's sake, Mr. March, and don't look so, or you'll do me a wrong that may cost us both our lives!"

"Cheap enough," said the youth, with a smile.

"You've made a ridiculous mistake, John. Before G.o.d I'm as innocent of any----"

"Before G.o.d, Major Garnet, you lie. If you deny it again I'll accuse you publicly. Go back and fondle the hand of that other man's wife; but don't ever speak to my mother again. If you do, I--I'll shoot you on sight."

"I'll call you to account for this, sir," said Garnet, moving to go.

"You're lying again," was John's bland reply, and he turned to his seat.

"Why, John," came the mother's sweet complaint, "I wanted to see Brother Garnet."

"Oh, I'm sorry," said the complaisant son.

Garnet paused on the coach's platform to get rid of his tremors. "He'll not tell," he said aloud, the uproar of wheels drowning his voice. "He's too good a Rosemonter to tattle. At first I thought he'd got on the same scent as Cornelius.

"Thank G.o.d, that's one thing there's no woman in, anyhow. O me, O me! If that tipsy n.i.g.g.e.r would only fall off this train and break his neck!

"And now here's _this_ calf to live in daily dread of. O dear, O _dear_, I ought to a-had more sense. It's all her fault; she's pure bra.s.s. They call youth the time of temptation--Good Lord! Why youth's armored from head to heel in its invincible ignorance. O me! Well--I'll pay him for it if it takes me ten years."

John's complacency had faded with the white heat of his anger, and he sat chafing in spirit while his elbow neighbor slept in the shape of an N. Across the car he heard Parson Tombs explaining to the Graves brethren and Sister March that Satan--though sometimes corporeal--and in that case he might be either unicorporeal or multicorporeal--and at other times unicorporeal--as he might choose and providence permit--and, mark you, he might be both at once on occasion--was by no means omnipresent, but only ubiquitous.

Lazarus supposed a case: "He might be in both these cahs at once an' yet not on the platfawm between 'em."

"It's mo' than likely!" said the aged pastor, no one meaning anything sly. Yet to some people a parson's smiling mention of the devil is always a good joke, and the Graves laughed, as we may say. Not so, Sister March; she never laughed at the prince of darkness, nor took his name in vain. She spoke, now, of his "darts."

"No, Sister March, I reckon his darts, fifty times to one, ah turned aside fum us by the provi_dence_ that's round us, not by the po' little patchin' o' grace that's in us."

John's heart jumped. Garnet looked in and beckoned him out. He went.

"John "--the voice was tearful--"I offer my hand in penitent grat.i.tude."

John took it. "Yes, my dear boy, my feet had well-nigh slipped."

"I oughtn't to have spoken as I did, Major Garnet."

"It was the word of the Lord, John. It saved me and my spotless name!

The mistake had just begun, in mere play, but it might have grown into actual sin--of impulse, I mean, of course--not of action; my lifelong correctness of----"

"Oh, I'm sure of that sir! I only wish _I_----"

"G.o.d bless you! I've a good notion to tell your mother this whole thing, John, just to make her still prouder of you." He squeezed the young man's hand. "But I reckon for others' sakes we'd better not breathe it."

"O, I think so, sir! I promise----"

"You needn't have promised, John. Your think-so was promise enough. And a mighty good thing for us all it's so. For, John March, you're the hope of Suez!

"You've got the key of all our fates in your pocket, John--you and your mother now, and you when you come into full charge of the estate next year. That's why Jeff-Jack's always been so willing to help me to help you on. But never mind that, only--beware of new friends. When they come fawning on you with offers to help you develop the resources of Widewood, you tell 'em----"

"That I'm going to develop them myself, alone."

"N-n-no--not quite that. O, you couldn't! You've no idea what a--why, _I_ couldn't do it _with_ you, without Jeff-Jack's help, nor he without mine! Why, just see what a failure the effort to build this road was, until"--the locomotive bellowed.

"Half-an-hour late, and slowing up again!" exclaimed John. He knew the parson's wife was pressing his mother to spend the night with them, and he was afraid of having his soul asked after. "Why do we stop here, hardly a mile from town?"

"It's to let my folks off. They're going to walk over to the pike while I go on for the carriage and drive out; they and Jeff-Jack and the Hallidays."

The train stopped where a beautiful lane crossed the track between two fenced fields. Fair and Barbara alighted and stood on a flowery bank with the sun glowing in some distant tree-tops behind them. Fannie leaned from the train, took both Jeff-Jack's uplifted hands and fluttered down upon rebounding tiptoes; the bell sounded, the scene changed, and John murmured to himself in heavy agony,

"He's going to ask her! O, Fannie, Fannie, if you'd only refuse to say yes, and give me three years to show what I can do! But he's going to ask her before that sun goes down, and what's she going to say?"

XXVIII.

INFORMATION FOR SALE

"Hope of Suez!" Garnet felt he had spoken just these three words too many. "Overtalked myself again," he said to himself while chatting with others; "a liar always does. But he shall pay for this. Ah me!"

He was right. The young man would have sucked down all his flattery but for those three words. Yet on one side they were true, and March guiltily felt them so as, looking at his mother, he thought again of that deep store of the earth's largess lying under their unfruitful custody. Suez and her three counties would have jeered the gaudy name from Lover's Leap to Libertyville though had they guessed better the meaning of the change into which a world's progress was irresistibly pushing them, whoever owned Widewood must have stood for some of their largest wishes and hopes, and they would have ceased to deride the blessed mutation and to hobble it with that root of so many world-wide evils--the calling still private what the common need has made public. The ghost of this thought flitted in John's mind, but would not be grasped or beckoned to the light.

"I wish I could think," he sighed, but he could only think of Fannie.

The train stopped. The excursionists swarmed forth. The cannon belched out its thunderous good-byes, and John went for his horse and buggy, promising to give word for Garnet's equipage to be sent to him.

"I must mind Johanna and her plunder," said the Major; "but I'll look after your mother, too." And he did so, though he found time to part fondly with the Proudfits.

"He won't do," thought John, as he glanced back from a rise of ground.

"Fannie's right. And she's right about me, too; the only way to get her is to keep away till I've shown myself fit for her; that's what she means; of course she can't say so; but I'm satisfied that's what she means!"