Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 by Various

V >> Various >> Stories by American Authors, Volume 1

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"No other gen'l'm'n a'n't comin'," said Porto Rico. "Don't I done tole
you dey don't bofe come de same day?"

The Holbrook house, three miles from the Capitol, of the dome of which
it commands a pretty glimpse across an expanse of foliage, is one of the
old residences remaining from the days of the slave-holders. Like many
such places it has been much altered and improved. It seems to have been
originally a one and-a-half-story stone dwelling, to which some later
proprietor has added a high-peaked roof, dormer windows, and ample
piazzas. It stands half-way up a slope, near the top of which is a
grove. A brook runs down through the woods on the other side of the
road, and beyond that rises a steep little bluff crowned with scrub-oaks
and chestnuts.

The attraction that drew people to Holbrook farm was not the proprietor
himself, nor very much his maiden sister, the housekeeper, nor yet
Carter, the farmer and manager who came with them from Richmond. It was
rather the engaging manners and amiable beauty of Nina Holbrook, the
daughter of the house. The old gentleman was a partial paralytic,
whimsical, and not especially sociable. He was known to have lived in
princely style at Richmond, formerly. He was said to have met for some
years past with continual reverses, in the loss of property, in
sickness, and in the death of friends. The farm was bought with almost
the last remnants of a great fortune.

As Barwood strode down the piazza, a young lady rose from her reading to
give him her hand.

Blonde beauty is slightly indefinite. The edges are, as it were, too
much softened off into the background. The figure before Barwood was
fresh, distinct, clear-cut,--pre-Raphaelitish, to take a word from
painting. In all the details, from the ribbon in her feathery brown hair
to the pretty buttoned boot, there was the ineffable aroma of a pure,
delicate taste.

To a man of Barwood's temperament falling in love was difficult. He
analyzed too closely. To ask the tender passion too many questions is to
repel its advances.

Nevertheless, after two years of intimate association, in which he had
discovered in Nina Holbrook a frankness and loveliness of character
commensurate with her personal graces, he had arrived at this
condition. First, He believed that her permanent influence upon his
character could cure his moodiness and his unpractical tendencies, and
enable him to exert his fullest powers. Second, By making the
supposition that anything should intervene to limit or break off their
intercourse, he found that she had become indispensable to him.

Their acquaintance had begun in some one of the ordinary ways in which
people meet. It might have been at a tea-party, or a secretary's
reception, or a boat excursion up the Potomac. They discovered that they
had mutual acquaintances to talk about. His evening rides began to be
directed through the pretty lanes that led to Holbrook. She loaned him a
book; he brought her confectionery; they played some piano duets
together.

On her side the sentiment was different. She respected Barwood for fine
traits and was grateful for his many kindnesses to her. But certain
peculiar moods of his made her uncomfortable. His interest also was too
much occupied with books, speculations about the anomalies and problems
of life, and similar serious matters. She found it wearisome and often
difficult to follow him. She admired such things, but had not as much
head for them as he gave her credit for. Her taste was more practical,
commonplace, and cheerful. She was satisfied with people and things in
their ordinary aspects.

She got on much better with Mars Brown, exchanging comments with him
upon the affairs of her friends and his, discussing the last party and
the next wedding, or laughing at his drollery. She confessed her
stupidity and frivolity with charming frankness.

Barwood was conscious that he did not always interest her, although she
never showed anything but the most ladylike attention. He often went
away lamenting the destiny that had fashioned his nature to run in so
small and rigid a groove. His happiness, therefore, did not consist in
being with her, for then he was oppressed by a consciousness of not
entirely pleasing her. It was rather in retrospect, in his memory of her
sweet and earnest face, the tones of her voice, the shine of her hair.
He gave her such small gifts as he might within the restraints of social
propriety. It would have consisted with his notion of the fitness of
things to give her everything he had and leave himself a beggar.

Barwood rode to Holbrook to-day with a definite purpose. He was aware,
although, as Porto Rico said, both gentlemen did not come on the same
day, that Mars Brown was devoting more attention in this direction of
late than the exigencies of his boat and ball clubs, his shooting and
fishing, and the claims of the social world in town would seem to
warrant. He did not yet really fear him as a rival. His presence was
only a suggestion of possibilities. There might at some time be rivals.
He had determined to forestall possibilities, and tell her of his
affection at once.

Mars Brown was, however, a dangerous rival, although himself perhaps as
little aware of it as Barwood. He also had met Nina and been impressed
by her animated beauty. Accustomed to success, he had ridden out to
Holbrook to add one more to his list of flirtations and conquests. The
results had by no means answered his expectations. When he approached
sentiment Nina laughed at him. By degrees he had been piqued into
earnestness, and had for the first time in his life approximated to a
serious esteem and attachment.

Although Nina laughed at first, later on she sometimes blushed at his
voice or his step, or when she put her hand into his. If his customary
shrewd vision had not been disturbed by some unusual influences at work
within himself, he would have seen it.

He had the audacity that charms women, and with it a frank, open face, a
hearty laugh, an entirely healthy, cheerful disposition, and an air of
strength under all his frivolity.

It has been said that Barwood had come to the farm to-day with a
definite purpose. He drew up one of the comfortable chairs at hand, and
sat down near to Nina. They talked at first of ordinary things, the
unusual heat, the news of the day, and what each had been doing since
their last meeting.

The secluded prospect before them was very peaceful. Barwood felt its
soothing influence acting upon the perturbation of his spirit.

"I am improving my mind, you see," said Nina, holding up to him one of
Motley's histories, which she had apparently been reading. "I do not
believe even you can find fault with this."

"Am I in the habit of finding fault with anybody, Miss Nina?"

"Oh no, I don't mean that exactly, but you know so much, you know, that
you frighten one."

"Thank you," said Barwood with a grave smile, "you flatter me."

"Why were you not at the Hoyts' last Tuesday?" said she.

"I was not invited, and, strange to state, I am a little diffident about
going under such circumstances."

"Ah, you are! how singular! But I wish you had been there, if it was
only to see Betty Goodwin. You used to know her. It is such a short time
ago that she was a little girl. Now she is out of school and as
important as anybody. You should have seen the attention she had, and
her perfect self-possession. It makes me feel extremely antiquated. Am I
very much wrinkled?"

Barwood gazed with admiration at her animated face. She was to him the
personification of youth and beauty. The notion of age and wrinkles in
her regard was inconceivable.

"Why, of course," said he; "Methuselah wasn't a circumstance."

She dismissed the subject with a little pout.

"I am so glad you have come early," she resumed. "I wish the others
would imitate your example."

"The others? What others?"

"Mr. Hyson, the Hoyt boys, Mr. Brown, Fanny Davis, and the rest. You did
not suppose you were to do them alone, I hope."

"Do what alone? I don't understand."

"Why, the tableaux--Evangeline. Did you not get my message yesterday?"

"I got no message. Am I to be implicated in tableaux?"

"Why, certainly. You are to be Evangeline's father. They are for the
benefit of the French wounded. I sent Carter to tell you yesterday. We
are to arrange the preliminaries this evening."

Barwood saw that if he would not postpone his purpose no time was to be
lost. The visitors might arrive at any moment.

Literature is full of the embarrassments of the marriage proposal. To
all who are not borne along by an impetuous impulse it is a trying
ordeal. Barwood was too self-conscious ever to be transported out of
himself.

"I have something to say to you, Miss Nina," he began, "which I have
come from town expressly to say. It is of the greatest moment to me."

She continued to look straight before her at the glowing evening sky,
and so did he. The crickets and katydids had commenced their chorus and
the tree-toads their long rhythm. Fire-flies flitted in the uncertain
light. There came from the woods the call of the owl and the
whippoorwill.

"We have sometimes laughed together at sentiment," he continued, "and
voted it an invention of the story-books; but there are times--there is
a sentiment--which--in short, dear Nina, I have come to ask you to be my
little wife. I have loved you almost since our first meeting."

"Oh, Mr. Barwood," said she, looking hastily towards him, with
heightened color and a tone of regret, "you must not say so. I cannot
let you go on."

"I must go on," said he. "I have never felt so strongly upon any subject
as this. I know I am not worthy of such happiness, yet I cannot bear the
thought of losing it. Consider our long friendship. You will be mine?
Oh, say so, Nina!" In the terrible dread that his petition was already
refused, he became a little incoherent.

Nina, a tender-hearted young lady, was by this time in tears. His
evident distress, and her recognition of the great compliment he had
paid her, would have commanded almost any return save the one he asked.
But the sacrifice was too great. She had not thought it would ever be
necessary to change their relation of friendship.

"I am very sorry to have to say what is painful to you," said she, with
a sob only half repressed. "I want you to be always my friend. I shall
be very unhappy if our friendship is to be broken, but _I_ cannot--you
will find some other"--

"Do not speak further," he interrupted, impetuously. "You have not yet
said no. Reserve your answer; take time to consider. Let me still hope."

"No," she began, "I ought"--but wheels and merry voices were heard at
the gate. "Oh! I cannot let them see me now," she said, and hurried
away. In a moment more the Robinsons' carriage was at the steps. When
Nina came down with a sweet, subdued manner, there was a jolly party of
ten or twelve in the drawing-room. Mars Brown was already amusing
everybody with his absurd posturing.

"I want to be Evangeline," said he, wrapping a lady's shawl about him
and sitting on the arm of a chair in a collapsed attitude. "No, on
second thought, I want to be Basil the blacksmith." He made imitations
of tremendous muscular power with a tack-hammer that happened in his way
for a sledge. Everybody on such occasions has his own notions of the
picturesque. A deal of talking was required in arranging the various
scenes. Evangeline must manifest a "celestial brightness," according to
the lines. "I don't think you do it quite right," said Julia Robinson.
"You should smile a little."

"Oh no, not at all; she should have an earnest, far off look," said
another critic.

"Of course she should," said Mars Brown, rumpling his hair and
contorting his features into an expression of idiotic vacancy;
"something this way."

"We ought to have a real artist to arrange them," said Nina; "what
would I give if old Mr. Megilp were here."

"Did you know Megilp?" exclaimed Barwood.

"Why, of course I did. He was my drawing teacher at Richmond for years."

"What a small world it is, to be sure," said Barwood, giving vent to a
favorite reflection. The mention of Megilp brought back for a moment a
remembrance of their last meeting and conversation, and the strange
pursuit into which it had led him.

The signing of the marriage contract was selected by the amateurs as an
appropriate subject for illustration.

"We must have a table," said Miss Travers. "At one side sits the notary,
lifting his pen from the document which he has just signed, and at the
other her father, pushing toward the notary a roll of money in payment."

"Here you are," said George Wigwag, taking his place and assuming the
appropriate gesture; "here's your notary; bring on your old gentleman
and his money."

"A roll of old copper cents would be just the thing," said Miss Travers.
"They look antique enough."

"Will some gentleman deposit with the treasurer a roll of antique copper
cents?" said Brown, passing a hat. "No gentleman deposits a roll of
copper cents. Very well, then the wedding can't go on."

"Do you think I'll sign marriage contracts for copper?" said Wigwag.
"No indeed; I'm not that kind of a notary."

"I will bring down some of papa's curiosity coins from his cabinet,"
said Nina. "I don't believe he will scold me, just for once."

She returned in a moment with a dozen or more silver pieces, and placed
them on the table by Barwood. He began to examine them carelessly.

"I did not know your father was a numismatist," said he.

"Oh yes," said Nina, "he always had a great taste in that way. His
collection now is nothing. When we broke up in Richmond most of it was
sold off. He retained only a few of the most valuable pieces, which he
keeps in a case in his room. I don't know much about such things, for my
part. Here is one that is considered curious. It was taken out of a
wreck on the California coast, I believe, and was the last papa bought
before his failure. I think it is Russian, perhaps, or Arabic--no, let
me see"--

Barwood, with an abstracted air, took it to examine. Suddenly he uttered
a strange exclamation and fell back in his chair, pale, trembling,
almost fainting.

_The coin was a Jewish shekel, with a cross cut through at one side._

He pleaded sudden illness, and rode hastily homeward in a state of
indescribable agitation.

* * * * *

V.

YOUNG FORTINBRAS.

Barwood's strange and almost forgotten conception was thus at length
realized, and the interest with which it had inspired him intensely
revived. One of the fatal pieces was found. He would now fain have
overthrown the structure of probabilities which he had labored so
painfully to elaborate. He reviewed step by step all the details of his
former study; but no argument availed in the face of the extraordinary
corroboration now offered. The piece was "stamped with a mark in shape
like a cross," and the account of Irenaeus was verified.

That this fatal piece should appear in the hands of the people whom of
all others he most esteemed and with whom his own fortunes were most
intimately bound up, was a terrible shock. This, then, was the clew to
the catalogue of Holbrook's misfortunes. What surpassing crime could the
old man have committed to be so signally marked out for vengeance? But
the question of most vital interest was what could be done to save the
family so dear to him from their impending fate.

With the recovery of some calmness, he felt that his first duty was to
remove the coin from their possession. But how was it to be done? He
could not disclose his knowledge of its baleful properties. It would be
set down as the vagary of a disordered brain; nobody would entertain it
for an instant. His object must be accomplished, if at all, by artifice.

When he next rode to the farm, nearly a week had elapsed since the
evening into which so many distracting emotions had been crowded. He
exerted himself to display unusual cheerfulness, with the double object
of removing any disagreeable impression which might have been the result
of his sudden departure on that occasion, and also of finding means to
forward his purpose. The subject uppermost in the thoughts of both was
at first carefully avoided, and they talked much in their usual fashion.

"Those coins, Miss Nina, which were used the other evening in the
tableau," said he, with a careless air, "can I see them again? I found
them interesting, but owing to my sudden illness, as you know, had
scarcely time to examine them."

"My father was displeased at me for taking them," said she, "and has
forbidden me to do so again. I think he would show them to you himself
with pleasure, if he were here, but he went North yesterday on business
which will detain him a week. He took the key of his cabinet with him."

Disappointed in this, there seemed to be for the present no resource. He
recurred again to his love. If she would consent to be his, he thought,
he might disclose the danger, and they could plan together to avert it.
He told her with what anxiety he had been awaiting her decision, and
then once more made his appeal with all the ardor at his command. As he
finished, standing close beside her, he took her hand.

She did not withdraw it, but still went on to tell him with great
calmness and dignity that what he desired could never be. She hoped
their friendship might always continue, but as for a closer relation, it
would be unjust to him as well as herself to enter into it without the
affection which she could not give.

He went away apparently very much broken down, saying that his life was
a burden to him, and that he had no use for it. The next day he came
again and acted so strangely, mingling appeals to her with talk about
her father's coins, that she was a little frightened.

The few days that succeeded made a striking change in the appearance of
Barwood. He became pale and haggard, and seemed to have lost his
capacity for business and fixed attention. He sat staring helplessly at
his papers for an hour at a time. The general, who with all his
iniquities was a good-hearted chief, thought he was sick, and told him
to stay at home and take care of himself. His reflections at this time
were tormenting. He saw that he had indeed been drawn within the
influence of the fatal coin. It was at him that its malignity was
directed, and he believed that his doom was approaching, as indeed it
was. Sometimes he gazed at his altered face in the glass, while tears
streamed down his cheeks. He said aloud, in a piteous tone, "Poor Henry
Barwood."

The sympathy of the world is generally upon the side of the unsuccessful
lover. He is considered to have been defrauded of happiness which should
by right have been his. But is it fair? Because her face is sweet, her
manners are amiable, her form is slender and graceful, and her hair has
a golden shine, and Barwood or Brown or Travers, as the case may be, in
common with all the world, recognizes it, does that establish a claim
upon her? Just as likely as not he has a snub nose and only fifteen
hundred a year, and cannot dance the Boston. No! sympathy is well
enough, but let not the blame be cast upon Chloe every time that Daphnis
goes off in despair to the Sandwich Islands, or the war in Cuba, or
turns out a good-for-nothing sot. Let it rather be set down as one of
the ill-adjustments of which there are so many in life, and the
endurance of which is no doubt of service in some direction not yet
fully understood.

In about a week there came from Holbrook Farm a message which was not
needed to complete the measure of Barwood's unhappiness.

"My father," wrote Nina, "has just returned. He has decided that we are
to remove permanently to Connecticut, where my aunt has fallen heir to
the Holbrook homestead. We shall leave next Monday. Will you let us see
you before we go?"

He mounted his horse and started at once. He did not know exactly what
he should do or say. His ideas were in a state of confusion, and there
was a numbness over all his sensations. He gave himself up blindly to
his destiny.

He saw Nina sitting in the shade of an apple-tree, half-way down the
lawn, near a little plateau which served for a croquet ground. He tied
his horse to the fence outside, much to the disappointment of the
rollicking negro boys, and walked up. Nina held in her lap a tray of
coins which she was engaged in brightening. She assumed a sprightliness
not quite natural, and evidently designed to obviate the awkwardness of
their peculiar relation.

"We have had an accident," said she. "One of our chimneys fell through
the roof during the storm last night. It shook down the plaster upon
papa's cabinet. The glass was broken and the rain came in so that this
morning it was in a sorry condition. I am repairing damages, you see. If
I were superstitious," she continued, "I should fear that something was
going to happen. I meet with so many omens lately. I spill salt, cross
funerals, and make one of thirteen at dinner parties."

Barwood replied as best he could; he did not know exactly what. He was
in no mood for flippancy. He assumed a dozen different positions in a
short space: first sitting on a camp-chair beside her, then hurried
walking up and down, then careless prostration upon the grass. The old,
useless argument was gone through with again. She told him at last that
it annoyed her, that he was very inconsiderate. Then again he paced up
and down the little croquet ground. She saw him twisting and clutching
his hands together behind him. At the fifth or sixth turn as he came by
she had the marked shekel in her hand. He took it from her and looked at
it curiously.

"Yes, it is indeed," said he in an unnatural voice, "fatal money, and I
am its latest victim!"

He threw it towards the woods with great force.

It rose high in the air, skimmed the trees, and they saw it twinkle into
the brook.

It was a very little incident. No magic hand arose from the water. The
beauty of the August day was not marred. The rain of the past night had
swollen the brook, which ran hurriedly on to the Potomac, making little
of this trivial addition to its burdens.

Nina did not reproach him. She felt that her father would consider the
loss irreparable, yet she had no words for this extraordinary rudeness.
After two or three turns more in his walk he stopped close beside her.

"For the last time," said he, "have I urged everything, and is it of no
use?"

She made no answer.

"You have said so?" he persisted.

"Yes, I have said so," she replied, with a touch of impatience, and
without raising her eyes. "I am engaged to Mars Brown."

He went forward several steps and stood still. Glancing up she saw him
hold a little revolver to his temple. It was one she had known him to
carry for protection when riding late in the evening. He seemed to
deliberate one terrible moment while she sat spell-bound as if by
nightmare, and then he fired and fell.

She tried to reach his body, but fainted on the way. Mars Brown, riding
to Holbrook for a half-holiday, was almost within sight.

Upon the closing scene of Hamlet, where the characters, after a period
of stormy conflict and exquisite anguish, lie strewn by violent death,
arrives young Fortinbras at the head of his marching army. Tall, sturdy,
elastic, dressed in chain-mail, victorious, careless, the impersonation
of ruddy life, the young Norway conqueror leans upon his sword above the
pitiable sight.

So this brilliant young man, elegant in figure, well dressed, joyous,
cynical, came whistling up the path. He cut off the clover tops with his
walking-stick. The butterflies, the pleasant aromas, and all the
manifestations of rural beauty pleased him.

"Egad," said he, "this isn't so bad, you know."

In a moment he stood by the apple-tree, and the whole sad spectacle was
before him.

* * * * *

The telegraphic column of a New York newspaper gave the story next
morning, in the conventional manner, as follows:

"Henry Barwood, a treasury clerk, was killed
yesterday at the Holbrook estate near Washington,
by the discharge of a pistol in his own hands. The
shooting is thought to have been accidental,
although he had been ill and depressed for some
days, and is said to have shown symptoms of insanity
on former occasions."

BALACCHI BROTHERS.

BY REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.

"There's a man, now, that has been famous in his time," said Davidge, as
we passed the mill, glancing in at the sunny gap in the side of the
building.

I paused incredulously: Phil's lion so often turned out to be Snug the
joiner. Phil was my chum at college, and in inviting me home to spend
the vacation with him I thought he had fancied the resources of his
village larger than they proved. In the two days since we came we had
examined the old doctor's cabinet, listened superciliously to a debate
in the literary club upon the Evils of the Stage, and passed two solid
afternoons in the circle about the stove in the drug-shop, where the
squire and the Methodist parson, and even the mild, white-cravated young
rector of St. Mark's, were wont to sharpen their wits by friction. What
more was left? I was positive that I knew the mental gauge of every man
in the village.

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