Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

"What will you do next?" he said. "Build a stone wall—or vote? Imagine a girl taking light recreation in equations, and letting her mind wander hilariously among groves of triangles on a rainy day!"

Marion colored highly, but said nothing. Her incisiveness seemed to fail her when with Lawrence Vickery. And, as he was never more than half in earnest, it was as hard to use real weapons against him as to fence with the summer wind. The young man seemed to have taken a fancy to Bro; he spent an hour or two at the saw-mill almost every day, and Cæsar had become quite accustomed to his voice shouting for the boat. But the old negro liked him, and came across cheerfully, even giving him voluntarily the title "marse," which the blacks withheld whenever they pleased now, and tenaciously. Vickery took Bro over to see his grandfather, the old house, and the wastes which were once their cotton-fields. He had no pride about the old gentleman's lowly office; he had roamed about the world too much for that. And, when Bro suggested that he should take the position himself and relieve his grandfather, he answered carelessly that his grandfather did not want to be relieved, which was true—old Mr. Vickery deriving the only amusement of his life now in plans for outwitting, in various small ways, the spirited superintendent.

"However," said Lawrence, "I could not in any case; I have plans of importance waiting for me."

"Where?" asked Bro.

"Well—abroad. I don't mind telling you," said Vickery; "but it is a secret at present."

"Then you do not intend to stay here?"

"Here? Bless you, no! The place is a howling, one-horse desert. I only came back awhile to see the old man."

The "while" lasted all winter, Young Vickery exhausted the town, the island, and the whole district; he was "hail fellow" with everybody, made acquaintance with the lighthouse-keeper, knew the captains of all the schooners, and even rode on the hand-car and was admitted to the friendship of the superintendent. But, in the way of real intimacy, the cottage and the saw-mill were his favorite haunts. He was with Marion a part of every day; he teased her, laughed at her flowers, mimicked her precise pronunciation, made caricatures of her friend Miss Drough, and occasionally walked by with Nannie Barr, the most consummate little flirt in the town. Marion changed—that is, inwardly. She was too proud to alter her life outwardly, and, beyond putting away the chess-problem book, and walking with Miss Drough in quiet paths through the andromeda and smilax thickets, or out on the barrens among the saw-palmettoes, rather than through the streets of the town, what she did was the same as usual. But she was not what she had been. She seemed to have become timid, almost irresolute; she raised her eyes quickly and dropped them as quickly: the old calm, steady gaze was gone; her color came and went. She was still erect as ever: she could not change that; but she seemed disposed to sit more in the shadow, or half behind the curtain, or to withdraw to her own room, where the bolt was now often used which had formerly rusted in its place. Bro noticed all this. Marion's ways had not been changeable like those of most girls, and he had grown into knowing them exactly: being a creature of precise habit himself, he now felt uncomfortable and restless because she was so. At last he spoke to her mother. "She is certainly changed: do you think there is any danger of fever?" he asked uneasily. But Mrs. Manning only blinked and nodded smilingly back in answer, holding up her finger to signify that Marion was within hearing. Supposing that he had comprehended her, of course, and glad to have a confidant, she now blinked and nodded at him from all sides—from behind doors, from over Marion's head, from out of the windows, even throwing her confidential delight to him across the river as he stood in the saw-mill doorway. Marion, then, was going through something—something not to be mentioned, but only mysteriously nodded—which was beneficial to her; what could it be? She had taken to going very frequently to church lately, in spite of her dislike to "the worm," who still occupied the pulpit. Bro went back to the experience of his youth in the up-country, the only experience he had to go back to, and decided that she must be having what they used to call there "a change of heart." Upon mentioning this in a furtive tone to Mrs. Manning, she laughed heartily, rather to his surprise, for he was a reverent sort of non-churchgoing pagan, and said, "Very good, Bro—very good, indeed!"

He decided that he had guessed rightly; the Episcopalian was, he had heard, a very cheerful kind of religion, tears and groaning not being required of its neophytes.

But his eyes were to be opened. The last trump could not have startled him more than something he saw with his own eyes one day. It happened in this way: There was an accident on the wharf; a young man was crushed between the end of the dock and the side of the steamer; some one came running to the cottage and said it was Lawrence Vickery. Mrs. Manning, the hands at the mill, and even old Dinah, started off at once; the whole town was hurrying to the scene. Bro, shut up in his workroom, going over his beloved valve again, did not hear or see them. It was nearly dinner-time, and, when he came out and found no boat, he was surprised; but he paddled himself across on a rude raft he had, and went up to the cottage. The doors stood open all over the house as the hasty departures had left them, and he heard Marion walking up and down in her room up stairs, sobbing aloud and wildly. He had never heard her sob before; even as a child she had been reticent and self-controlled. He stood appalled at the sound. What could it betoken? He stole to the foot of the stairs and listened. She was moaning Lawrence's name over and over to herself—"Lawrence! Lawrence! Lawrence!" He started up the stairs, hardly knowing what he was doing. Her grief was dreadful to him: he wanted to comfort her, but did not know how. He hardly realized what the cry meant. But it was to come to him. The heart-broken girl, who neither saw nor heard him, although he was now just outside the door, drew a locket from her bosom and kissed it passionately with a flood of despairing, loving words. Then, as if at the end of her strength, with a sigh like death, she sank to the floor lifeless; she had fainted.