The Colonel's Dream Page 2

  _Two_

  The hack which the colonel had taken at the station after a two-days'journey, broken by several long waits for connecting trains, jogged insomewhat leisurely fashion down the main street toward the hotel. Thecolonel, with his little boy, had left the main line of railroadleading north and south and had taken at a certain way station the onedaily train for Clarendon, with which the express made connection.They had completed the forty-mile journey in two or three hours,arriving at Clarendon at noon.

  It was an auspicious moment for visiting the town. It is true that thegrass grew in the street here and there, but the sidewalks wereseparated from the roadway by rows of oaks and elms and china-trees inearly leaf. The travellers had left New York in the midst of asnowstorm, but here the scent of lilac and of jonquil, the song ofbirds, the breath of spring, were all about them. The occasionalstretches of brick sidewalk under their green canopy looked cool andinviting; for while the chill of winter had fled and the sultry heatof summer was not yet at hand, the railroad coach had been close anddusty, and the noonday sun gave some slight foretaste of his comingreign.

  The colonel looked about him eagerly. It was all so like, and yet sodifferent--shrunken somewhat, and faded, but yet, like a woman oneloves, carried into old age something of the charm of youth. The oldtown, whose ripeness was almost decay, whose quietness was scarcelydistinguishable from lethargy, had been the home of his youth, and hesaw it, strange to say, less with the eyes of the lad of sixteen whohad gone to the war, than with those of the little boy to whom it hadbeen, in his tenderest years, the great wide world, the only world heknew in the years when, with his black boy Peter, whom his father hadgiven to him as a personal attendant, he had gone forth to field andgarden, stream and forest, in search of childish adventure. Yonder wasthe old academy, where he had attended school. The yellow brick of itswalls had scaled away in places, leaving the surface mottled with palesplotches; the shingled roof was badly dilapidated, and overgrown hereand there with dark green moss. The cedar trees in the yard were inneed of pruning, and seemed, from their rusty trunks and scantleafage, to have shared in the general decay. As they drove down thestreet, cows were grazing in the vacant lot between the bank, whichhad been built by the colonel's grandfather, and the old red brickbuilding, formerly a store, but now occupied, as could be seen by therow of boxes visible through the open door, by the post-office.

  The little boy, an unusually handsome lad of five or six, with blueeyes and fair hair, dressed in knickerbockers and a sailor cap, wasalso keenly interested in the surroundings. It was Saturday, and thelittle two-wheeled carts, drawn by a steer or a mule; the pigssleeping in the shadow of the old wooden market-house; the lean andsallow pinelanders and listless negroes dozing on the curbstone, wereall objects of novel interest to the boy, as was manifest by the lightin his eager eyes and an occasional exclamation, which in a clearchildish treble, came from his perfectly chiselled lips. Only a glancewas needed to see that the child, though still somewhat pale anddelicate from his recent illness, had inherited the characteristicsattributed to good blood. Features, expression, bearing, were markedby the signs of race; but a closer scrutiny was required to discover,in the blue-eyed, golden-haired lad, any close resemblance to theshrewd, dark man of affairs who sat beside him, and to whom thislittle boy was, for the time being, the sole object in life.

  But for the child the colonel was alone in the world. Many yearsbefore, when himself only a boy, he had served in the Southern army,in a regiment which had fought with such desperate valour that thehonour of the colonelcy had come to him at nineteen, as the solesurvivor of the group of young men who had officered the regiment. Hisfather died during the last year of the Civil War, having lived longenough to see the conflict work ruin to his fortunes. The son had beenoffered employment in New York by a relative who had sympathised withthe South in her struggle; and he had gone away from Clarendon. Theold family "mansion"--it was not a very imposing structure, except bycomparison with even less pretentious houses--had been sold uponforeclosure, and bought by an ambitious mulatto, who only a few yearsbefore had himself been an object of barter and sale. Entering hisuncle's office as a clerk, and following his advice, reinforced by asense of the fitness of things, the youthful colonel had dropped hismilitary title and become plain Mr. French. Putting the past behindhim, except as a fading memory, he had thrown himself eagerly into thecurrent of affairs. Fortune favoured one both capable and energetic.In time he won a partnership in the firm, and when death removed hisrelative, took his place at its head.

  He had looked forward to the time, not very far in the future, when hemight retire from business and devote his leisure to study and travel,tastes which for years he had subordinated to the pursuit of wealth;not entirely, for his life had been many sided; and not so much forthe money, as because, being in a game where dollars were thecounters, it was his instinct to play it well. He was winning already,and when the bagging trust paid him, for his share of the business, asum double his investment, he found himself, at some years less thanfifty, relieved of business cares and in command of an ample fortune.

  This change in the colonel's affairs--and we shall henceforth call himthe colonel, because the scene of this story is laid in the South,where titles are seldom ignored, and where the colonel could hardlyhave escaped his own, even had he desired to do so--this change in thecolonel's affairs coincided with that climacteric of the mind, fromwhich, without ceasing to look forward, it turns, at times, in wistfulretrospect, toward the distant past, which it sees thenceforwardthrough a mellowing glow of sentiment. Emancipated from the countingroom, and ordered South by the doctor, the colonel's thoughts turnedeasily and naturally to the old town that had given him birth; and hefelt a twinge of something like remorse at the reflection that neveronce since leaving it had he set foot within its borders. For years hehad been too busy. His wife had never manifested any desire to visitthe South, nor was her temperament one to evoke or sympathise withsentimental reminiscence. He had married, rather late in life, a NewYork woman, much younger than himself; and while he had admired herbeauty and they had lived very pleasantly together, there had notexisted between them the entire union of souls essential to perfectfelicity, and the current of his life had not been greatly altered byher loss.

  Toward little Phil, however, the child she had borne him, his feelingwas very different. His young wife had been, after all, but a sweetand pleasant graft upon a sturdy tree. Little Phil was flesh of hisflesh and bone of his bone. Upon his only child the colonel lavishedall of his affection. Already, to his father's eye, the boy gavepromise of a noble manhood. His frame was graceful and active. Hishair was even more brightly golden than his mother's had been; hiseyes more deeply blue than hers; while his features were a duplicateof his father's at the same age, as was evidenced by a fadeddaguerreotype among the colonel's few souvenirs of his own childhood.Little Phil had a sweet temper, a loving disposition, and endearedhimself to all with whom he came in contact.

  The hack, after a brief passage down the main street, deposited thepassengers at the front of the Clarendon Hotel. The colonel paid theblack driver the quarter he demanded--two dollars would have been theNew York price--ran the gauntlet of the dozen pairs of eyes in theheads of the men leaning back in the splint-bottomed armchairs underthe shade trees on the sidewalk, registered in the book pushed forwardby a clerk with curled mustaches and pomatumed hair, and accompaniedby Phil, followed the smiling black bellboy along a passage and up oneflight of stairs to a spacious, well-lighted and neatly furnishedroom, looking out upon the main street.