“I can’t give you any idea of the scenery en route, Major,”—she was describing a trip to the far west,—“in fact I slept the whole way. You see, my social duties were very onerous last spring. Our club had determined to give twelve dinner dances during the season, and the weather became hot unusually early, and so many people were leaving town that as we were pledged to twelve we were compelled to give four of the dinner dances during the last week and my head was in a whirl. There was the Adelantado ball, too, and several very elaborate luncheons, and two or three teas every afternoon, and what between the indigestion and the two-step lumbago I was in a state of collapse on the journey west.”
“That was a novel campaign,” remarked the old soldier.
“It was a forced march,” declared Hildegarde. “I didn’t revive until I heard dance music again in the Golden City. Let me prop your head up against the window frame on my muff, Major. Oh, yes, it is very pretty,—all soft gray and white.” She made a point of describing everything in detail for his sightless vision. “You might get a nap in this fresh air,—for it is a ‘pillow muff.’ Yes, indeed,” watching his trembling fingers explore its soft densities, “it is very fine, but I won’t mention the awful sum it cost my daddy lest such a conscienceless pillow give you the nightmare.”
The air had all that bland luxurious quality so characteristic of the southern autumn. A sense was rife in the sunlit spaces of a suspension of effort. The growths of the year were complete; the inception of the new was not yet in progress. No root stirred; there was never a drop of sap distilled; not a twig felt the impetus of bourgeonning anew. Naught was apposite to the season save some languorous dream, too delicate, too elusive even for memory. It touched the lissome grace of the willow-wands, bare and silvery and flickering in the imperceptible zephyrs. It lay, swooning with sweetness, in the heart of a late rose which found the changing world yet so kind that not a petal wilted in fear of frost. It silvered the mists and held them shimmering and spellbound here and there above the shining pearl-tinted water. It was not summer, to be sure, but the apotheosis of the departing season. Those far gates of the skies were opening to receive the winged past, and, surely, some bright reflection of a supernal day had fallen most graciously on all the land.
“For my part, since that deal is over and done with by this time, I don’t care how long I have to wait for a boat,—it can neither mar nor make so far as I am concerned,” said the broker, as he puffed his cigar and walked with long, meditative strides up and down the stone pavement.
Floyd-Rosney did not concur in this view. He had expected all the early hours that some of the neighboring negroes would come to the house, attracted by the rumors of the commotions enacted there during the night. Thus he could hire a messenger to take a note or a telephone message to the nearest livery establishment and secure a conveyance for himself and family to the railroad station some ten miles distant. He feared that hours, nay a day or so, might elapse before one of the regular packets plying the river might be expected to pass. Those already in transit had, doubtless, “tied up” during the storm, and now waited till the current should compass the clearance of the débris of the hurricane floating down the river. The steamers advertised to leave on their regular dates had not cast off, in all probability, but lay supine in their allotted berths till the effects of the storm should be past, and thus would not be due here for twelve or twenty-four hours, according to the distance of their point of departure.
As, however, time went on and the old house stood all solitary in the gay morning light as it had in the sad moon-tide, Floyd-Rosney reflected that no one had gone forth from the place except the robbers and the roustabouts who had rowed the party down from the Cherokee Rose, returning thither immediately. It was, therefore, improbable that any rumor was rife of the temporary occupation of the Duciehurst mansion. Hence the absence of curiosity seekers. Moreover, even were the circumstances known, every human creature in the vicinity with the capacity to stand on its feet and open and close its fingers was in the cotton fields this day, for the sun’s rays had already sufficiently dried off the plant, and the industry of cotton-picking, even more than time and tide, waits for nobody. For “cotton is money,—maybe more, maybe less, but cotton is money every time,” according to the old saying. These snowy level fields were rich with coin of the republic. The growing staple was visible wealth, scarcely needing the transmuting touch of trade. No! of all the wights whom he might least expect to see it was any cotton-picker, old or young, of the region.
There being, evidently, no chance of a messenger, he had half a mind, as his impatience of the detention increased, to go himself in search of means of telephonic communication. But, apart from his spirit of leisure and his habit of ease, his prejudices were dainty, and he looked upon the miry richness of the Mississippi soil as if it were insurmountable. To be sure, now and again he affected a day of sylvan sport, when, with dog and gun, he cared as little as might be for mud, or rain, or sleet, or snow; but then, he was caparisoned as a Nimrod, and burrs and briers, stains and adhesive mire, were all the necessary accessories, and of no consideration. In his metropolitan attire to step out knee deep in a soil made up of river detritus, the depth and blackness of which are the boast and glory of the cotton belt, was scarcely to be contemplated if an alternative was possible.
Suddenly a cry smote the air with electrical effect. “A boat! A boat!”