The Colonel's Dream Read online

  _Four_

  While the colonel and old Peter were thus discussing reminiscences inwhich little Phil could have no share, the boy, with childishcuriosity, had wandered off, down one of the shaded paths. When, alittle later, the colonel looked around for him, he saw Phil seated ona rustic bench, in conversation with a lady. As the boy seemedentirely comfortable, and the lady not at all disturbed, the coloneldid not interrupt them for a while. But when the lady at length rose,holding Phil by the hand, the colonel, fearing that the boy, who was achild of strong impulses, prone to sudden friendships, might beproving troublesome, left his seat on the flat-topped tomb of hisRevolutionary ancestor and hastened to meet them.

  "I trust my boy hasn't annoyed you," he said, lifting his hat.

  "Not at all, sir," returned the lady, in a clear, sweet voice, somehaunting tone of which found an answering vibration in the colonel'smemory. "On the contrary, he has interested me very much, and innothing more than in telling me his name. If this and my memory do notdeceive me, _you_ are Henry French!"

  "Yes, and you are--you are Laura Treadwell! How glad I am to meet you!I was coming to call this afternoon."

  "I'm glad to see you again. We have always remembered you, and knewthat you had grown rich and great, and feared that you had forgottenthe old town--and your old friends."

  "Not very rich, nor very great, Laura--Miss Treadwell."

  "Let it be Laura," she said with a faint colour mounting in her cheek,which had not yet lost its smoothness, as her eyes had not faded, norher step lost its spring.

  "And neither have I forgotten the old home nor the old friends--sinceI am here and knew you the moment I looked at you and heard yourvoice."

  "And what a dear little boy!" exclaimed Miss Treadwell, looking downat Phil. "He is named Philip--after his grandfather, I reckon?"

  "After his grandfather. We have been visiting his grave, and those ofall the Frenches; and I found them haunted--by an old retainer, whohad come hither, he said, to be with his friends."

  "Old Peter! I see him, now and then, keeping the lot in order. Thereare few like him left, and there were never any too many. But how haveyou been these many years, and where is your wife? Did you bring herwith you?"

  "I buried her," returned the colonel, "a little over a year ago. Sheleft me little Phil."

  "He must be like her," replied the lady, "and yet he resembles you."

  "He has her eyes and hair," said his father. "He is a good little boyand a lad of taste. See how he took to you at first sight! I canalways trust Phil's instincts. He is a born gentleman."

  "He came of a race of gentlemen," she said. "I'm glad it is not todie out. There are none too many left--in Clarendon. You are going tolike me, aren't you, Phil?" asked the lady.

  "I like you already," replied Phil gallantly. "You are a very nicelady. What shall I call you?"

  "Call her Miss Laura, Phil--it is the Southern fashion--a happy unionof familiarity and respect. Already they come back to me, Laura--onebreathes them with the air--the gentle Southern customs. With all thefaults of the old system, Laura--it carried the seeds of decay withinitself and was doomed to perish--a few of us, at least, had a goodtime. An aristocracy is quite endurable, for the aristocrat, andslavery tolerable, for the masters--and the Peters. When we wereyoung, before the rude hand of war had shattered our illusions, wewere very happy, Laura."

  "Yes, we were very happy."

  They were walking now, very slowly, toward the gate by which thecolonel had entered, with little Phil between them, confiding a handto each.

  "And how is your mother?" asked the colonel. "She is living yet, Itrust?"

  "Yes, but ailing, as she has been for fifteen years--ever since myfather died. It was his grave I came to visit."

  "You had ever a loving heart, Laura," said the colonel, "given to dutyand self-sacrifice. Are you still living in the old place?"

  "The old place, only it is older, and shows it--like the rest of us."

  She bit her lip at the words, which she meant in reference to herself,but which she perceived, as soon as she had uttered them, might applyto him with equal force. Despising herself for the weakness which hemight have interpreted as a bid for a compliment, she was glad that heseemed unconscious of the remark.

  The colonel and Phil had entered the cemetery by a side gate and theirexit led through the main entrance. Miss Laura pointed out, as theywalked slowly along between the elms, the graves of many whom thecolonel had known in his younger days. Their names, woven in thetapestry of his memory, needed in most cases but a touch to restorethem. For while his intellectual life had ranged far and wide, hisbusiness career had run along a single channel, his circle ofintimates had not been very large nor very variable, nor was hismemory so overlaid that he could not push aside its later impressionsin favour of those graven there so deeply in his youth.

  Nearing the gate, they passed a small open space in which stood asimple marble shaft, erected to the memory of the Confederate Dead.

  A wealth of fresh flowers lay at its base. The colonel took off hishat as he stood before it for a moment with bowed head. But for themercy of God, he might have been one of those whose deaths as well asdeeds were thus commemorated.

  Beyond this memorial, impressive in its pure simplicity, and betweenit and the gate, in an obtrusively conspicuous spot stood a floridmonument of granite, marble and bronze, of glaring design andstrangely out of keeping with the simple dignity and quiet restfulnessof the surroundings; a monument so striking that the colonel pausedinvoluntarily and read the inscription in bronze letters on the marbleshaft above the granite base:

  "'_Sacred to the Memory of Joshua Fetters and Elizabeth Fetters, his Wife._

  "'_Life's work well done, Life's race well run, Life's crown well won, Then comes rest._'"

  "A beautiful sentiment, if somewhat trite," said the colonel, "but anatrocious monument."

  "Do you think so?" exclaimed the lady. "Most people think the monumentfine, but smile at the sentiment."

  "In matters of taste," returned the colonel, "the majority are alwayswrong. But why smile at the sentiment? Is it, for some reason,inappropriate to this particular case? Fetters--Fetters--the nameseems familiar. Who was Fetters, Laura?"

  "He was the speculator," she said, "who bought and sold negroes, andkept dogs to chase runaways; old Mr. Fetters--you must remember oldJosh Fetters? When I was a child, my coloured mammy used him for abogeyman for me, as for her own children."

  "'Look out, honey,' she'd say, 'ef you ain' good, ole Mr. Fettuhs 'llketch you.'"

  Yes, he remembered now. Fetters had been a character in Clarendon--notan admirable character, scarcely a good character, almost a badcharacter; a necessary adjunct of an evil system, and, like otherparasites, worse than the body on which he fed; doing the dirty workof slavery, and very naturally despised by those whose instrument hewas, but finding consolation by taking it out of the Negroes in thecourse of his business. The colonel would have expected Fetters to liein an unmarked grave in his own back lot, or in the potter's field.Had he so far escaped the ruin of the institution on which he lived,as to leave an estate sufficient to satisfy his heirs and also pay forthis expensive but vulgar monument?

  "The memorial was erected, as you see from the rest of theinscription, 'by his beloved and affectionate son.' That either lovedthe other no one suspected, for Bill was harshly treated, and ran awayfrom home at fifteen. He came back after the war, with money, which helent out at high rates of interest; everything he touched turned togold; he has grown rich, and is a great man in the State. He was alarge contributor to the soldiers' monument."

  "But did not choose the design; let us be thankful for that. It mighthave been like his father's. Bill Fetters rich and great," he mused,"who would have dreamed it? I kicked him once, all the way down MainStreet from the schoolhouse to the bank--and dodged his angry motherfor a whole month afterward!"

  "No one," suggested Miss Laura, "would venture to cross him now. Toom
any owe him money."

  "He went to school at the academy," the colonel went on, unwinding thethread of his memory, "and the rest of the boys looked down on him andmade his life miserable. Well, Laura, in Fetters you see one thingthat resulted from the war--the poor white boy was given a chance togrow; and if the product is not as yet altogether admirable, taste andculture may come with another generation."

  "It is to be hoped they may," said Miss Laura, "and character as well.Mr. Fetters has a son who has gone from college to college, and willgraduate from Harvard this summer. They say he is very wild and spendsten thousand dollars a year. I do not see how it can be possible!"

  The colonel smiled at her simplicity.

  "I have been," he said, "at a college football game, where the gatereceipts were fifty thousand dollars, and half a million was said tohave changed hands in bets on the result. It is easy to waste money."

  "It is a sin," she said, "that some should be made poor, that othersmay have it to waste."

  There was a touch of bitterness in her tone, the instinctiveresentment (the colonel thought) of the born aristocrat toward theupstart who had pushed his way above those no longer strong enough toresist. It did not occur to him that her feeling might rest upon anypersonal ground. It was inevitable that, with the incubus of slaveryremoved, society should readjust itself in due time upon a democraticbasis, and that poor white men, first, and black men next, shouldreach a level representing the true measure of their talents and theirambition. But it was perhaps equally inevitable that for a generationor two those who had suffered most from the readjustment, shouldchafe under its seeming injustice.

  The colonel was himself a gentleman, and the descendant of a long lineof gentlemen. But he had lived too many years among those who judgedthe tree by its fruit, to think that blood alone entitled him to anyspecial privileges. The consciousness of honourable ancestry mightmake one clean of life, gentle of manner, and just in one's dealings.In so far as it did this it was something to be cherished, butscarcely to be boasted of, for democracy is impatient of anyexcellence not born of personal effort, of any pride save that ofachievement. He was glad that Fetters had got on in the world. Itjustified a fine faith in humanity, that wealth and power should havebeen attained by the poor white lad, over whom, with a boy'sunconscious brutality, he had tyrannised in his childhood. He couldhave wished for Bill a better taste in monuments, and better luck insons, if rumour was correct about Fetters's boy. But, these, perhaps,were points where blood _did_ tell. There was something in blood,after all, Nature might make a great man from any sort of material:hence the virtue of democracy, for the world needs great men, andsuffers from their lack, and welcomes them from any source. But finetypes were a matter of breeding and were perhaps worth the trouble ofpreserving, if their existence were compatible with the larger good.He wondered if Bill ever recalled that progress down Main Street inwhich he had played so conspicuous a part, or still bore anyresentment toward the other participants?

  "Could your mother see me," he asked, as they reached the gate, "if Iwent by the house?"

  "She would be glad to see you. Mother lives in the past, and you wouldcome to her as part of it. She often speaks of you. It is only a shortdistance. You have not forgotten the way?"

  They turned to the right, in a direction opposite to that from whichthe colonel had reached the cemetery. After a few minutes' walk, inthe course of which they crossed another bridge over the same windingcreek, they mounted the slope beyond, opened a gate, climbed a shortflight of stone steps and found themselves in an enchanted garden,where lilac bush and jessamine vine reared their heads high, tulip anddaffodil pushed their way upward, but were all dominated by theintenser fragrance of the violets.

  Old Peter had followed the party at a respectful distance, but, seeinghimself forgotten, he walked past the gate, after they had entered it,and went, somewhat disconsolately, on his way. He had stopped, and waslooking back toward the house--Clarendon was a great place for lookingback, perhaps because there was little in the town to which to lookforward--when a white man, wearing a tinned badge upon his coat, cameup, took Peter by the arm and led him away, despite some feebleprotests on the old man's part.