The Story of Duciehurst: A Tale of the Mississippi

by Charles Egbert Craddock

She wished to risk not even a word aside with him. She was eager to get away from the table, although the dinner that the Captain had ordered to be packed made ample amends for the delay. It had its defects, doubtless, as one might easily discern from the disconsolate and well-nigh inconsolable port of the waiter at intervals, but these were scarcely apparent to the palates of the company. It was, of course, inferior to the menus of the far-famed dinners of the steamboats of the olden times, but there is no likelihood of famishing on the Mississippi even at the present day, and the hospitable Captain Disnett had no mind that these voluntary cast-a-ways should suffer for their precipitancy. It was still a cheerful group about that storied board as Paula slipped from the end of the bench and quietly through the door. If her withdrawal were noted it would doubtless be ascribed to her anxiety concerning little Ned, and thus her absence would leave no field for speculation. She did not, however, return to the room devoted to the use of the feminine passengers of the Cherokee Rose, where the child now lay asleep. She walked slowly up and down the great hall, absorbed in thought. She was continually surprised at herself, analyzing her own unwonted mental processes. She could not understand her calmness, in this signal significant discovery in her life, that she did not love her husband. She would not rehearse his faults, retrace in her recollection a thousand incidents confirmatory of the revelation of his character that had been elicited on this unhappy voyage. How long, she wondered, would the illusion have continued otherwise,—to her life’s end? Somehow she could not look forward, and she felt a sort of stupefaction in this, although she realized that her faculties were roused by her perception of the truth. The spirit-breaking process, of which she had been sub-acutely aware, was ended. She could not be so subjugated save by love, the sedulous wish to please, the tender fear of disapproval, the ardent hope of placating. Suddenly she was aware that she was laughing, the fool, to have felt all this for a man who could strike her, cruelly, painfully, artfully, on the sly that none might know. But even while she laughed her eyes were full of tears, so did she compassionate the self she ridiculed with scorn as if it were some other woman whom she pitied.

She felt as if she must be alone. All the day since that crisis the presence of people had intruded clamorously upon her consciousness. She would fain take counsel within herself, her own soul. Above all, she wished to avoid the sight of her husband, the thought of him. Whenever the sound of voices in the dining-room broke on her absorption as she neared the door in her pacing back and forth, she paused, looking over her shoulder, tense, poised, as if for flight. And at last, as the clamor of quitting the table heralded the approach of the company, with scarcely a realized intention, the instinct of escape took possession of her, and she sped lightly up the great staircase, as elusive, as unperceived as the essence of the echoes which she had fancied might thence descend.

She hesitated, gasping and out of breath, at the head of the flight, looking about aghast at the gaunt aspect of the wrecked mansion. The hall was a replica of the one below, save that there were three great windows opening on a balcony instead of the front door. The glass was broken out, the Venetian blinds were torn away, and from where she stood she could see the massive Corinthian columns of the portico rising to the floor of the story still above. A number of large apartments opened on this hall, their proportions and ornate mantel-pieces all visible, for the doors, either swung ajar or wrenched from their hinges, lay upon the floors. Paula did not note, or perhaps she forgot, that the wreck expressed forty years of neglect, of license and rapine and was the wicked work of generations of marauders. She felt that the destruction was actuated by a sort of fiendish malice. It had required both time and strength, as well as wanton enmity, a class hatred, one might suppose, bitter and unreasoning, the wrath of the poor against the rich, even though unmindful and indifferent to the injury. It seemed so strange to her that the house should be left thus by its owners, despite its inutilities in the changed conditions of the world. It had a dignity, as of the ruin of princes, in its vestiges of beauty and splendor, and the savor of old days that were now historic and should hold a sort of sanctity. Even the insensate walls, in the rifts of their shattered plaster, their besmirched spoliation, expressed a subtle reproach, such as one might behold in some old human face buffeted and reviled without a cause.

She had a swift illumination how it would have rejoiced the Ducies to have set up here their staff of rest in the home hallowed as the harbor of their ancestors. They were receptive to all the finer illusions of life. They cherished their personal pride; they revered their ancient name; they honored this spot as the cradle of their forefathers, and although they were poor in the world’s opinion, they held in their own consciousness that treasure of a love of lineage, that obligation to conform to a high standard which imposed a rule of conduct and elevated them in their own esteem. Their standpoint was all drearily out of fashion, funny and forlorn, but she could have wept for them. And why, since the place had no prosaic value, had not Fate left it to those whom it would have so subtly enriched. Here in seemly guise, in well-ordered decorum, in seclusion from the sordid world, the brothers who so dearly loved each other would have dwelt in peace together, would have taken unto themselves wives; children of the name and blood of the old heritage would have been reared here as in an eagle’s nest, with all the high traditions that have been long disregarded and forgotten. It seemed so ignoble, so painful, so unjust, that the place should be thus neglected, despised, cast aside, and yet withheld from its rightful owners. She caught herself suddenly at the word. Her husband, her son, were the rightful owners now, and it was their predecessor who did not care.

As she stood gazing blankly forward the three windows of the upper hall suddenly flamed with a saffron glow, for they faced a great expanse of the southwestern sky, which, for one brief moment, was full of glory. The waters of the Mississippi were a rippling flood of molten gold; the dun-tinted, leafless forests on either bank accentuated in somber contrast this splendid apotheosis of the waning day. The magnolia trees about the house shone with every glossy leaf, an emerald for richness of hue, and all at once, far beyond, Paula beheld the solution of the mystery that had baffled her, the answer to her question, the Duciehurst cotton fields, as white as snow, as level as a floor, as visibly wealth-laden as if the rich yield of the soil were already coined into gold. Here was the interest of the sordid proprietors; the home was no home of theirs; they had been absentees from the first of their tenure. The glimmering marble cross, the lofty granite shaft that showed when the wind shifted among the gloomy boughs of the weeping willows in the family graveyard, marked the resting place of none of their kindred. Their bones were none of these bones, their flesh sprung from none of these dead ashes. The Duciehurst lands made cotton, and cotton made money, and the old house, built under other conditions, was suited to no needs that they could create in the exigencies of a new day. Therefore, it was left to shelter the owl, the gopher, the river-pirate, the shanty-boater, the moon in its revolutions, and when the nights were wild the wind seemed to issue thence as from a lair of mysteries.

Paula suddenly turned from the revelation, and gathering the lustrous white skirt of her crêpe dress, freshly donned, in one jewelled hand with a care unconsciously dainty, as was her habit, she noiselessly slipped up the great dusty spiral of the stair leading to the third story, lest curiosity induced some exploring intrusive foot thus far, ere she had thought out her perplexity to its final satisfaction. She was aware that the day dulled and darkened suddenly; she heard the wind burst into gusty sobs; the clouds had fallen to weeping anew, and the night was close at hand. She was curiously incongruous with the place as she stood looking upward, the light upon her face, at a great rift in the roof. The rain-drops dripped monotonously from smaller crevices down upon the floor with a sort of emphasis, as if the number were registered and it kept a tally. There were doubtless divisions and partitions further to the rear, but this apartment was spacious above the square portion of the mansion, and the ceiling had a high pitch. She thought for a moment that they might have danced here in the old times, so fine were the proportions of the place. Then she remembered that third-story ball-rooms were not formerly in vogue, and that she had heard that the one at Duciehurst was situated in the west wing on the ground floor. This commodious apartment must have been a place of bestowal. The walls betokened the remnants of presses, and she could almost fancy that she could see the array of trunks, of chests, of discarded furniture, more old-fashioned than that below, the bags of simples, of hyacinth bulbs which were uprooted every second year to be planted anew. There was an intensification of the spirit of spoil manifested elsewhere as if the search for the hidden treasure here had been more desperate and radical. The chimneys seemed to have been special subjects of suspicion, for several showed that the solid masonry had been gouged out, leaving great hollows. As she stood amidst the gray shadows in her lustrous white crêpe gown with the shimmer of satin from its garniture, she was a poetic presentment, even while engrossed in making the prosaic deduction that here was the reason these chimneys smoked when fires were kindled below.

The solitude was intense, the silence an awesome stillness, her thoughts, recurring to her own sorry fate, were strenuous and troublous, and thus even her strong, elastic young physique was beginning to feel very definitely the stress of fatigue, and excitement, and fear, that had filled the day as well as the effects of the emotional crisis which she had endured. She found that she could scarcely stand; indeed, she tottered with a sense of feebleness, of faintness, as she looked about for some support, something on which she might lean, or better still, something that might serve as a seat. Suddenly she started forward toward the window near the outer corner of the room. The low sill was broad and massive in conformity with the general design of the house, and she sank down here in comfort, resting her head against the heavy moulding of the frame. Her eyes turned without, and she noted with a certain interest the great foliated ornaments, the carved acanthus leaves of the capitals of the Corinthian columns, one of which was so close at hand that she might almost have touched it, for the roof of the portico here, which had been nearly on a level with the window, was now in great part torn away, giving a full view of the stone floor below. This column was the pilaster, half the bulk of the others, being buttressed against the wall. The size of the columns was far greater than she had supposed, looking at them from below, the capitals were finished with a fine attention to detail. The portico was indeed an admirable example of this sort of adapted architecture which is usually distinguished rather by its license than its success. But she had scant heart to mark its values or effect. Her reflections were introspective. She looked out drearily on the wan wastes of the skies, and the somber night closing in, and bethought herself of the woeful change in the atmosphere of her soul since the skies last darkened. She said to herself that illusions were made for women, who were not fitted to cope with facts, and that it was better to be a loving fool, gulled into the fancy that she, too, is beloved, than to see clearly, and judge justly, and harbor an empty aching heart. For there was no recourse for her. It was not in her power to frame her future. Her husband had, and he knew he had, the most complete impunity, and doubtless this gave him an assurance in domineering that he would not otherwise have dared to exert. He was cognizant of her delicate pride, the odium in which she would hold the idea of publicity in conjugal dissension. She would never have permitted, save under some extreme stress like that of the single instance of the morning, others to look in upon a difference between them, yet there had been from the first much to bear from his self-absorbed and imperious temper, and she had borne it to the extent of self-immolation, of self-extinction. In fact, she was not, she had not been for years, herself. She could not say, indeed, when her old identity had asserted itself before to-day. It was the aspect of the Ducie face, the associations of the past that had recalled her real self to life, that had relumed the spark of pride which had once been her dominant trait, that had given her courage to revolt at rebuke in Adrian’s presence, to hold up her head, to speak from her own individuality, to be an influence to be reckoned with. But of what avail? Life must go on as heretofore, the old semblance of submission, of adulation, the adjustment of every word, every idea, every desire, to the mould of her husband’s thought, his preference. She wondered how she would be enabled to maintain the farce of her love, that had hitherto seemed capable of infinite endurance, of limitless pardoning power, and the coercive admiration for him that she had felt throughout all these five years. He was aware, and this fact was so certain that she was sure he had never given the matter even a casual, careless thought, that for the sake of their son, his precious presence, his comfort and care, his future standing before the world, no recourse was possible for her, no separation, no divorce. Floyd-Rosney might beat her with a stick if he would, instead of that deft, crafty little blow he had dealt on her wrist with his knuckles, and she would hide the wales for her child’s sweet sake. No law was ever framed comprehensive enough to shield her. She was beyond the pale and the protection of the law. And as she realized this she held down her head and began to shed some miserable tears.

Perhaps it was this relaxation that overpowered her nerves, this cessation of resistance and repining. When she opened her eyes after an interval of unconsciousness her first thought was of the detail of the Scriptures touching the young man who slept in a high window through the apostle’s preaching and “fell down from the third loft.” She had never imagined that she should do so reckless, so wild a thing. Her methods were all precautionary, her mental attitude quiet and composed. She still sat in the window, looking out for a little space longer, for she was indisposed to exertion; her muscles were stiff, and her very bones seemed to ache with fatigue. The sky had cleared while she slept; only a few white, fleecy lines, near the horizon, betokened the passing of the clouds. It had that delicate ethereal blue peculiar to a night of lunar light, for the stars were faint, barring the luster of one splendid planet, the moon being near the full and high in the sky. The beams fell in broad skeins diagonally through the front windows, while the one at the side gave upon the dark summits of the great magnolias, where the radiance lingered, enriching the gloss of their sempervirent foliage. The weeping willows in their leafless state were all a fibrous glister like silver fountains, and in their midst she could see glimpses in the moonlight of the white gleam of the marble cross, the draped funereal urn, the granite shaft where those who had once rested secure beneath this kindly roof of home now slept more securely still within the shadow of its ruin. A broken roof it now was, and through the rift overhead the moonlight poured in a suffusive flood, illuminating all the space beneath. She heard the plaintive drip, drip, drip, from some pool among the shingles where the rain had found a lodgment. The river flashed in myriad ripples, as steadily, ceaselessly it swept on its surging way to the Gulf. She was familiar with its absolute silence, concomitant with its great depth, save, of course, in the cataclysmal crisis of a crevasse, and as she heard the unmistakable sound of a dash of water, she bent a startled intentness of gaze on the surface to perceive a rowboat steadily, but slowly, pulling up the current. She wondered at her own surprise, yet so secluded was the solitude here that any sight or sound of man seemed abnormal, an intrusion. She knew that a boat was as accustomed an incident of a riverside locality as a carriage or a motor in a street. It betokened some planter, perhaps, returning late, because of the storm, from a neighboring store or a friend’s house. Any waterside errand might duplicate the traffic of the highway.

How late was it, she wondered, for her interest in the boat had dwindled as it passed out of sight beneath the high bank. The idea that perhaps she alone was waking in this great, ruinous house gave her a vague chill of fear. She began to question how she could nerve herself, with this overwhelming sense of solitude, to attempt the exit through the labyrinth of sinister shadows and solemn, silent, moonlit spaces among the unfamiliar passages and rooms to the ground floor. She remembered that the railing of the spiral staircase had shaken, here and there, beneath her hand as she had ascended, the wood of the supporting balusters having rotted in the rain that had fallen for years through the shattered skylight. Her progress had been made in the daylight, and she had now only the glimmer of the moon, from distant windows and the rift in the roof. She began to think of calling for assistance; this great empty space would echo like a drum, she knew, but unfamiliar with the plan of the house she could not determine the location of the rooms occupied by the party from the Cherokee Rose. If the hour were late, as she felt it must be, and their inmates all asleep, she might fail to make herself heard. And then she felt she would die of solitary terror.

Paula could not sufficiently rebuke her own folly that she should have lingered so long apart from the party, that she should have carried so far her explorations,—nay, it was an instinct of flight that had led her feet. She dreaded her husband’s indignant and scornful surprise and his trenchant rebuke. She realized why she had not been already missed by him as well as by the others. Doubtless the ladies who were to occupy the music-room as a dormitory had retired early, spent with fatigue and excitement. Perhaps Hildegarde Dean might have sat for a time in the bow-window of the dining-room and talked to Adrian Ducie, and Colonel Kenwynton, and Major Lacey, as they ranged themselves on one of the benches by the dining-table and smoked in the light of a kerosene lamp which the Captain had furnished forth, and watched the moon rise over the magnolias, and the melancholy weeping willows, and the marble memorials glimmering in the slanting light. But even Hildegarde could not flirt all day and all night, too. Paula could imagine that when she came into the music-room, silent and on tip-toe, she stepped out of her blue toggery with all commendable dispatch, only lighted by the moon, gave her dense black hair but a toss and piled it on her head and slipped into bed without disturbing the lightest sleeper, unconscious that the cot where little Ned should slumber in his mother’s bosom was empty, but for his own chubby form. The men, too, as they lay in a row on the shake-down in the smoking-room with their feet to the fire, might have chatted for a little while, but doubtless they soon succumbed to drowsiness, and slumbered heavily in the effects of their drenchings and exhaustion, and it would require vigorous poundings on their door to rouse them in the morning.