He left the room and pa.s.sed through the silent house, mounted his horse, and rode away. A crowd had witnessed his arrival there; only a few wondering servants were gathered to see him depart. He gave them gold, but though they thanked him, they thanked him with a difference. He felt it, and that more keenly than he might have felt a greater thing. Could he not even give largesse like one to the manner born, or was it only that all the air was hostile? He rode away. From the saddle he could have seen the distant summer-house, but he forced himself not to look.

The lawn fell away behind him, and the trees hid the house. The gleam of a white pillar kept with him for a while, but the driveway bent, and that too was hidden. With Joab behind him on the iron grey, he pa.s.sed through the lower gate, and took the way that led to Mrs. Jane Selden's on the Three-Notched Road.

CHAPTER XII

A MARRIAGE AT SAINT MARGARET'S

"Yes," said Unity. "That is just what the Argus says. 'On Thursday M.

Jerome Buonaparte, the younger brother of the First Consul, pa.s.sed through Annapolis with his bride--lately the lively and agreeable Miss Elizabeth Patterson of Baltimore. M. Buonaparte's Secretary and Physician followed in a chaise, and the valets and _femmes-de-chambre_ in a coach. The First Consul's brother wore--' I protest I don't care what the First Consul's brother wore! The Argus is not gallant. If you were the First Consul's brother--"

"The Argus should describe the bride's dress, not mine," said Fairfax Cary. "How lovely you would look, in that gown you have on, in a curricle drawn by grey horses! What is the stuff--roses and silver?"

"Heigho!" sighed Unity. "'Tis a bridesmaid's gown. I am out with men. I shall never wear a bride's gown."

"Don't jest--"

"Jest! I never felt less like jesting! I laugh to keep from crying. Here is the coach."

The great Fontenoy coach with the Churchill arms on the panel drew up before the porch. It was drawn by four horses, and driven by old Philip in a wig and nosegay. Mingo was behind, and Phyllis's Jim and a little darky ran alongside to open the door and let down the steps. "All alone in that!" exclaimed Cary. "I shall ride with you as far as the old road to Greenwood. Don't say no! I'll hold your flowers."

Unity looked down upon the roses in her arms. "They should all be white," she said. "I feel as though I were going to see them bury Jacqueline." Her voice broke, but she bit her lip, forced back the tears, and tried to laugh. "I'm not. I'm going to her wedding--and people know their own business best--and she may be as happy as the day is long! He is fascinating,--he is dreadfully fascinating,--and we have no right to say he is not good--and everybody knows he is going to be great! Why shouldn't she be happy?"

"I don't know," answered Cary. "But I know she won't be."

"You say that," cried Unity, turning on him, "because you are a Federalist! Well, women are neither Federalists nor Republicans! They have no party and no soul of their own! They are just what the person they love is--"

"That's not so," said Cary.

"Oh, I know it's not so!" agreed Miss Dandridge, with impatience. "It's just one of those things that are said! But it remains that Jacqueline must be happy. I'll break my heart if she's not! And as long as I live, I'll say that Uncle d.i.c.k and Uncle Edward are to blame--"

"Where are they?"

"Oh, Uncle d.i.c.k is in the long field watching the threshing, and Uncle Edward is in the library reading Swift! And Aunt Nancy has ordered black scarfs to be put above the pictures of Uncle Henry and of Great-Aunt Jacqueline that Jacqueline's named for. Oh, oh!"

"And Deb?" asked the young man gently.

"Deb is at Cousin Jane Selden's. She has been there with Jacqueline a week--she and Miranda. Oh, I know--Uncle d.i.c.k is a just man! He does what he thinks is the just thing. Deb shall go visit her sister--every now and then! And all that Uncle Henry left Jacqueline goes with her--there are slaves and furniture and plate, and she has money, too.

The Rands don't usually marry so well--There! I, too, am bitter! But Uncle d.i.c.k swears that he will never see Jacqueline again--and all the Churchills keep their word. Oh, family quarrels! Deb's coming back to Fontenoy to-morrow--poor little chick! Aunt Nancy's got to have those mourning scarfs taken away before she comes!"

Miss Dandridge descended the porch steps to the waiting coach. The younger Cary handed her in with great care of her flowers and gauzy draperies, and great reluctance in relinquishing her hand. "I may come too?" he asked, "just as far as the old Greenwood road? I hate to see you go alone."

"Oh, yes, yes!" answered Miss Dandridge absently, and, sinking into a corner, regarded through the window the July morning. "Those black scarfs hurt me," she said, and the July morning grew misty. "It's not death to marry the man one loves!"

The coach rolled down the drive to the gate, and out upon the sunny road. The dust rose in clouds, whitening the elder, the stickweed, and the blackberry bushes. The locusts shrilled in the parching trees. The sky was cloudless and intensely blue, marked only by the slow circling of a buzzard far above the pine-tops. There were many pines, and the heat drew out their fragrance, sharp and strong. The moss that thatched the red banks was burned, and all the ferns were shrivelling up.

Everywhere b.u.t.terflies fluttered, lizards basked in the sun, and the stridulation of innumerable insects vexed the ear. The way was long, and the coach lumbered heavily through the July weather. "I do not want to talk," sighed Unity. "My heart is too heavy."

"My own is not light," said Cary grimly. "I am sorry for my brother."

"We are all sorry for your brother," Unity answered gently, and then would speak no more, but sat in her silver and roses, looking out into the heat and light. The Greenwood road was reached in silence. Cary put his head out of the window and called to old Philip. The coach came slowly to a stop before a five-barred gate. Mingo opened the door, and the young man got out. "Unless you think I might go with you as far as the church--" he suggested, with his hand on the door. Unity shook her head. "You can't do that, you know! Besides, I am going first to Cousin Jane Selden's. Good-bye. Oh, it is going to be a happy marriage--it must be happy!"

"What is going to make it happy?" demanded Cary gloomily. "It's a match against nature! When I think of your cousin in that old whitewashed house, and every night Gideon Rand's ghost making tobacco around it! I am glad that Ludwell has gone to Richmond. He looks like a ghost himself."

"Oh, the world!" sighed Unity. "Tell Philip, please, to drive on."

"I'll ride over to Fontenoy to-morrow," said Fairfax Cary. "'Twill do you good to talk it over."

The coach went heavily on through the dust of the Three-Notched Road.

The locusts shrilled, the pines gave no shade, in the angle of the snake fences pokeberry and sumach drooped their dusty leaves. The light air in the pine-tops sounded like the murmur of a distant sea, too far off for coolness. Unity sighed with the oppression of it all. The flowers were withering in her lap. After a long hour the road turned, discovering yellow wheat-fields and shady orchards, the gleam of a shrunken stream and a brick house embowered in wistaria. Around the horse-block and in the shade of a great willow were standing a coach or two, a chaise, and several saddle-horses. "All of them Republican," commented Unity.

At the door she was met by Cousin Jane Selden herself, a thin and dark old lady with shrewd eyes and a determined chin. "I'm glad to see you, Unity, though I should have been more glad to see Richard and Edward Churchill! 'Woe to a stiff-necked generation!' says the Bible. Well! you are fine enough, child, and I honour you for it! There are a few people in the parlour--just those who go to church with us. The clock has struck, and we'll start in half an hour. Jacqueline is in her room, and when she doesn't look like an angel she looks like her mother. You had best go upstairs. Mammy Chloe dressed her."

Unity mounted the dark, polished stairs to an upper hall where stood a tall clock and a spindle-legged table with a vast jar of pot-pourri. A door opened, framing Jacqueline, dressed in white, and wearing her mother's wedding veil. "I knew your step," she said. "Oh, Unity, you are good to come!"

In the bedroom they embraced. "Wild horses couldn't have kept me from coming!" declared Unity with resolute gaiety. "Whichever married first, the other was to be bridesmaid!--we arranged that somewhere in the dark ages! Oh, Jacqueline, you are like a princess in a picture-book!"

"And Uncle d.i.c.k and Uncle Edward?" asked Jacqueline, in a low voice.

"Well, the Churchills are obstinate folk, as we all know!" answered Unity cheerfully. "But I think time will help. They can't go on hating forever. Uncle d.i.c.k is in the fields, and Uncle Edward is in the library reading. There, there, honey!"

Mammy Chloe bore down upon them from the other end of the room. "Miss Unity, don' you mek my chile cry on her weddin' mahnin'! Hit ain't lucky to cry befo' de ring's on!"

"I'm not crying, Mammy," said Jacqueline. "I wish that I could cry. It is you, Unity, that are like a princess in your rose and silver, with your dear red lips, and your dear black eyes! Isn't she lovely, Mammy?"

She came close to her cousin and pinned a small brooch in the misty folds above the white bosom. "This is my gift--it is mother's pearl brooch. Oh, Unity, don't think too ill of me!"

"Think ill!" cried Unity, with spirit. "I think only good of you. I think you are doing perfectly right! I'll wear your pearl always--you were always like a pearl to me!"

"Even pearls have a speck at heart," said Jacqueline. "And there's nothing perfectly right--or perfectly wrong. But most things cannot be helped. Some day, perhaps, at home--at Fontenoy--they will think of the time when they were young--and in love." She turned and took up her gloves from the dressing-table. "I have had a letter from Ludwell Cary,"

she said, then spoke over her shoulder with sudden lire. "He is the only one of all I know, the only one of all my people, who has been generous enough, and just enough, to praise the man I marry!"

"Oh, Jacqueline!" cried Unity, "I will praise him to the skies, if only he will make you happy! Does not every one say that he has a great future? and surely he deserves all credit for rising as he has done--and he is most able--"

"And _good_," said Jacqueline proudly. "Don't praise him any more, Unity." She put her hands on her cousin's shoulders and kissed her lightly on the forehead. "Now and then, my dear, will you come to see me on the Three-Notched Road? I shall have Deb one week out of six."

"I shall come," answered Unity. "Where is Deb?"

"She is asleep. She cried herself to sleep."

"Chillern cry jes' fer nothin' at all," put in Mammy Chloe. "Don' you worry, honey! Miss Deb's all right. I's gwine wake her now, an' wash her face, an' slip on her li'l white dress. She's gwine be jes' ez peart an'

ez happy! My Lawd! Miss Deb jes' gainin' a brother!"

"Jacqueline," came Cousin Jane Selden's voice at the door. "It is almost time."

The coach of the day was an ark in capacity, and woman's dress as sheathlike as a candle flame. Jacqueline, Unity, Deb, Cousin Jane Selden, and a burly genial gentleman of wide family connections and Republican tenets travelled to church in the same vehicle and were not crowded. The coach was Cousin Jane Selden's; the gentleman was of some remote kinship, and had been Henry Churchill's schoolmate, and he was going to give Jacqueline away. He talked to Cousin Jane Selden about the possibilities of olive culture, and he showed Deb a golden turnip of a watch with jingling seals. Jacqueline and Unity sat in silence, Jacqueline's arm around Deb. Behind their coach came the small party gathered at Mrs. Selden's. The church was three miles down the road. It was now afternoon, and the heat lay like a veil upon wood and field and the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge. The dust rose behind the carriage, then sank upon and further whitened the milkweed and the love vine and the papaw bushes. The blaze of light, the incessant shrilling of the locusts, the shadeless pines, the drouth, the long, dusty road--all made, thought Unity, a dry and fierce monotony that seared the eyes and weighed upon the soul. She wondered of what Jacqueline was thinking.

The Church of Saint Margaret looked forth with a small, white-pillared face, from a grove of oaks. It had a flowery churchyard, and around it a white paling, keeping in the dead, and keeping out all roaming cattle.

There was a small cracked bell, and the swallows forever circled above the eaves and in and out of the belfry. Without the yard, beneath the oaks, were a horserack and a shed for carriages. To-day there were horses at the rack and tied beneath the trees; coaches, chaises, and curricles, not a few, beneath the shed and scattered through the oak grove. The church within was all rustle and colour. Saint Margaret's had rarely seen such a gathering, or such a wholly amicable one, for to-day all the pews were of one party. The wedding was one to draw the curious, the resolutely Republican, the kindred and friends of Jefferson,--who, it was known, had sent the bride a valuable present and a long letter,--the interested in Rand, the inimical, for party and other reasons, to the Churchills and the Carys. The county knew that Miss Churchill might have had Greenwood. The knowledge added piquancy to the already piquant fact that she had chosen the house on the Three-Notched Road. Colonel Churchill and Major Edward, the county knew, would not come to the wedding; neither, of course, would the two Carys; neither, it appeared, would any other Federalist. The rustling pews looked to all four corners and saw only folk of one watchword. True, under the gallery was to be seen Mr. Pincornet, fadedly gorgeous in an old green velvet, but to this English stock Mr. Pincornet might give what word he chose; he remained a French dancing master. The rustling pews nodded and smiled to each other, waiting to see Jacqueline Churchill come up the aisle in bridal lace. Under the gallery, not far from Mr. Pincornet, sat Adam Gaudylock, easy and tawny, dressed as usual in his fringed hunting-frock, with his c.o.o.nskin cap in his hand, and his gun at his feet. Beside him sat Vinie Mocket, dressed in her best. Vinie's eyes were downcast, and her hands clasped in her lap. She wondered--poor little partridge!--why she was there, why she had been so foolish as to let Mr Adam persuade her into coming Vinie was afraid she was going to cry. Yet not for worlds would she have left Saint Margaret's; she wanted, with painful curiosity, to see the figure in bridal lace She wondered where Tom was Tom was to have joined Mr. Adam and herself an hour ago The bell began to ring, and all the gathering rustled loudly.