Colonel Royall straightened his face and rubbed his eyeglasses on a dollar bill, which, he held, was the only way to clean them. “Lysander is the rogue,� he said, “and old Aunt Charity has been known to steal Juniper’s clothes for him to wear. She dressed him in Juniper’s best last year and sent him to the fair with all the money from her washing. Meanwhile the old man had nothing but his blue jeans and a cotton undershirt, and wanted to go to the fair, too. There was a great row. Of course Lysander got drunk and was sent up for thirty days in Juniper’s Sunday clothes. Lordy!� the colonel laughed heartily, “you could hear the noise down at the embankment. Juniper wanted a ‘divorcement’ and his clothes, principally his clothes. Judge Hollis and I had to fit him out, but he and Aunt Charity didn’t speak until there was another funeral; that brings niggers together every time; there’s a chaste joy about a funeral that melts their hearts.�
The colonel laughed again reminiscently, but Caleb, being a young man and human, was aware that Diana had crossed the hall again, and that she must have heard her father laughing at him. It was not long after this that he made his adieux, and he did not ask to see Miss Royall. The colonel walked with him to the gate and pointed out the magnificent promise of grapes on his vines.
“It will be a plentiful season, Mr. Trench,� he said, “and I hope a good harvest; let us have peace.�
Caleb understood the tentative appeal, and he liked the old man, but to a nature like Trench’s truth is the sling of David; he must smite Goliath. “Colonel Royall,� he said, “no man desires peace more than I do, but—peace with honor.�
Colonel Royall stood in the center of his own gateway, his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, his white head bare. “Mr. Trench,� he said, “I understand that we are not to have peace.�
Thursday night Kitty Broughton gave her ball. Her father was dead, and Judge Hollis stood beside her mother to help Kitty receive her guests. Everybody who was anybody in the city came out, and all Eshcol was there. Mrs. Eaton declared that it was the most mixed affair she ever saw, when she recognized Caleb Trench. She told all her friends not to allow any presuming person to present him to her, and in an hour she had made all the guests painfully aware that there was a black sheep in the fold. Then Kitty Broughton added fuel to the fire by dancing the first dance with him, and it was discovered, by all the girls present, that he danced exceedingly well, and quite as if he had always gone to entertainments. This surprised those who criticized Mrs. Broughton for asking him; yet not to have had him would have been to have the banquet without the salt. For Jacob Eaton was there, too, and though he wore an inscrutable face, it was exciting to wonder how he felt, and what would happen if they met?
Meanwhile, the dancing went on, and Mrs. Broughton had presented Trench to several of the young girls from the city, who admired his dancing, so he had partners; but he was aware of the frigidity of the atmosphere and he had not asked Miss Royall to dance. Instead, Diana had danced twice with her cousin and once with young Jack Cheyney, a nephew of the doctor. She was very beautiful. Trench looked across the ballroom at her and thought that no sculptured figure of nymph or dryad had ever excelled the beauty of her tall young figure, its slender but perfect lines, and the proud pose of her head. She wore a white brocade flowered with pink, like apple-blossoms, and Trench thought of her and the spring buds in his lonely office. The splendid diamond that shone like a star above her forehead reminded him of the wide divergence in their fates.
Judge Hollis found him and laid a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “Glad to see you out, Caleb,� he said heartily; “a change will do you good. Mouldy old law-books and old men pall on a young fellow like you. I saw you lead off with Kitty. The minx is pretty and dances well. Have you asked Diana to dance?�
“No,� said Trench; “Miss Royall has too many partners to accept another, I fancy.�
“Better ask her,� counseled the judge; “the lady is something of a tyrant. Don’t get on her black books too early, sir; besides, courtesy demands it. Didn’t she accept your care and hospitality?�