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Religion and the Rise of Modern Culture 1st Edition
Louis Dupré Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Louis Dupré
ISBN(s): 9780268077617, 0268077614
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 16.35 MB
Year: 2008
Language: english
 Religion and the Rise of
Modern Culture

dupre.indb i 1/9/08 7:49:08 AM

 Erasmus Institute Books

dupre.indb ii 1/9/08 7:49:09 AM

Dupre samples 1/10/08 12:30 PM Page iii

Religion and the Rise of

Modern Culture
d
LOUIS DUPRÉ

University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana
Dupre samples 1/10/08 12:38 PM Page iv

Copyright © 2008 by University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved

Designed by Wendy McMillen

Set in 11.8/14 Pavane by EM Studio, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dupré, Louis K., 1925–
Religion and the rise of modern culture / Louis Dupre.
p. cm. — (Erasmus Institute books)
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-268-02594-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-268-02594-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Christianity and culture—Europe—History. 2. Europe—Intellectual life.
3. Christianity and culture—Germany—History. 4. Germany—Intellectual life.
5. Church history—Modern period, 1500– I. Title.
BR735.D86 2008
261.0943—dc22
2007051040
 
contents

Preface vii

Introduction: Religion and the Rise of Modern Culture 1

ONE The Form of Modernity 5

TWO Nature and Grace 17

THREE The Crisis of the Enlightenment 29

FOUR On the Intellectual Sources of Modern Atheism 41

FIVE God and the Poetry of the New Age: 57

Classicism and Romanticism in Germany

SIX Schelling and the Revival of Mythology 75

SEVEN The Rebirth of Theology: Schleiermacher 95

and Kierkegaard

Conclusion: Religion at the End of the Modern Age 111

Index of Names 119

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dupre.indb vi 1/9/08 7:49:09 AM
 
preface

The following pages contain the text of the Erasmus Lec-

tures, delivered at the University of Notre Dame during the academic
year 2005–2006. For me the meaning of the occasion was enhanced
by its occurring at an institute that bears the name of the father of
Europe’s spiritual unity, a teacher at my alma mater. Erasmus taught
tolerance at a time of intolerance and remains a guide in the religious
turmoil of the present.
Writing down a previously spoken text proved to be a sobering
experience. The expectant faces, probing questions, intellectual chal-
lenges, which had made the delivery so exciting, no longer sustained
the writing. To compensate for their absence, I have attempted to
preserve at least some of the spontaneity of the original setting. Still,
as lectures turned into chapters, theses proclaimed with the pre-
sumed authority of an invited speaker often assumed a tentative qual-
ity. Questions never asked or never answered glaringly appeared
through the assertiveness of the spoken words. I became painfully
aware of the provisional character of the ideas expressed, especially
in the second part of the lectures. I hope to cast them in a more de-
finitive form during the next years. As the lectures appear here, they
nevertheless recapture for me the stimulating dialogue with an intel-
ligent and generous audience engaged in a common search for the na-
ture of modern culture.
They also revived the gratitude I continue to feel toward my won-
derful hosts, Robert Sullivan and Dianne Phillips, the director and

vii

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 viii Preface

associate director of the Erasmus Institute, as well as the joy of reliv-

ing the presence of friends long out of sight yet marvelously un-
changed, Cyril O’Reagan and Kathy Kaveney. I gratefully recall
making the acquaintance of men and women with whom I felt an in-
stant spiritual affinity, especially Dean Mark Roche, Professor Fred
Dallmayer, and poet Henry Weinfield. To all of them I dedicate this
memoir of a shared experience.
Special thanks to Barbara Hanrahan, the director of the Notre
Dame Press, and to Rebecca DeBoer, its managing editor, for their
gracious kindness and patience.
The first three chapters recapitulate much that I have developed
in Passage to Modernity (Yale University Press, 1993) and The Enlight-
enment and the Intellectual Development of Modern Culture (Yale Univer-
sity Press, 2004). Parts of chapter 4 have been published in “On the
Intellectual Sources of Modern Atheism,” International Journal for
Philosophy of Religion 45 (1999): 1–11.

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Introduction
Religion and the Rise of Modern Culture

The title of this book might raise questions. Does man’s par-
ticipation in the eternal ever change? Interpretations, rituals, even
moral precepts become transformed over the centuries. Yet does the
religious attitude not remain constant within the flux of time? It
does, indeed. But the individual and social response to religion also
includes the task of integrating that attitude within the warp and
woof of existence in a particular culture at a particular time. The
manner in which the devout fulfill that task differs from one period
to another. Its nature is at least in part determined by the social and
intellectual conditions prevailing at the time of the response.
In the history of Christianity, cultural transformations may have
been more substantial during the modern period than in any preced-
ing one. The seeds of change were planted much earlier, some at the
height of the Middle Ages, some even before. I shall trace them in
the first two chapters. For over a millennium Western culture had
been the culture of Christianity. At the beginning of the modern age,
culture and religion assumed a certain independence vis-à-vis each
other. During the Enlightenment, separation turned into opposition.

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 2 Religion and the Rise of Modern Culture

Later their relation became more conciliatory. Yet the Church never
regained its former authority over society. Theology, once the domi-
nant science that had integrated all others, definitively lost its com-
manding position.
In the first part of these lectures (ch. 1–4) I shall sketch the grad-
ual weakening of the Christian synthesis, partly as a result of the
breakdown of the form principle (ch. 1) and partly because of an ever-
growing distinction between the orders of nature and of grace (ch. 2).
In addition to these changes and partly because of them, modern cul-
ture increasingly came to regard the human subject as the sole source
of meaning and value. Combined, these factors gradually severed
Christianity from the culture it had built. The Enlightenment marked
a turning point in this process of secularization (ch. 3). Atheism be-
came, for the first time, a real threat to religion (ch. 4).
After the French Revolution and mostly as a reaction against it,
religion, but not necessarily Christian faith, once again appeared
destined to play a significant role in intellectual life. Yet now the
roles were reversed. Rather than dominating them, religion became
transformed by intellectual and moral principles conceived indepen-
dently of faith and often against it. In the second part of these lec-
tures I shall investigate the new situation in three areas. First is in
the literature of Romanticism. To illustrate this I have selected three
poets whose work profoundly affected religious attitudes of the con-
temporary age: Goethe, Schiller, and Hölderlin (ch. 5). Second, the
related impact of idealist philosophy significantly contributed to-
ward reunifying religion with the entire life of the mind. No one il-
lustrates this better than Schelling, who incorporated mythology and
revelation as essential parts within his philosophical system (ch. 6).
Third, theology itself underwent a basic transformation during this
period, as the early Romantic Schleiermacher and the late Romantic
Kierkegaard prove (ch. 7).
I have deliberately limited the discussion to German sources, be-
cause in Germany the Enlightenment had achieved its influence
mainly within and through theology. German poets, philosophers,
and theologians consciously attempted to achieve a new synthesis of
religion and culture. Moreover, during this critical period the origi-
nality of German philosophers and theologians surpassed that of

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 Introduction 3

their contemporaries in France and England. I conclude with some

general reflections about the impact of modernity on the contempo-
rary state of religion and culture.
Obviously, this work presents no more than a limited perspective
on the very complex relation between religion and modern culture.
But I remain convinced that the basic patterns formed in the modern
age, especially at the dawn of the contemporary era, have maintained
themselves. The chapters here presented are to be considered capita
selecta of a more comprehensive project. The reader is encouraged to
read them as such.

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dupre.indb 4 1/9/08 7:49:10 AM
 
chapter ONE

The Form of Modernity

Until recent years some cultural historians restricted the

concept of modern culture to the Enlightenment. They assumed that
the main significance of fifteenth-century humanism, of the Renais-
sance, and even of the first part of the classical seventeenth century
consisted in preparing the mental attitudes of the Enlightenment.
Jacob Burckhardt’s Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy may serve as
a model of this approach. But principles such as the equation of the
real with the objective, the emancipation from past political and re-
ligious traditions, or the autonomy of reason, characteristic of En-
lightenment thought, by no means define the early modern epoch.
Even today, the assumption of a straight continuity between the
phases of modernity has not entirely vanished. To be sure, there is
a modern culture, a mode of thinking, feeling, and creating that
stretches from the fifteenth through the twentieth century. But it ar-
rived in successive waves, each one bringing its own principles,
which, though continuous with those of the previous one, do not fol-
low from them with logical necessity. Modernity is an ongoing cre-
ative process that even today has not reached completion.

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 6 Religion and the Rise of Modern Culture

By the end of the fourteenth century the cloud of dark resigna-

tion that hung over a civilization half destroyed by the plague and an
intellectual life lost in a moribund theology began to lift. In those
southern regions of Europe, which had never fully broken with an-
cient culture, the old sense of dignity was revived and the rediscovery
of the past inspired a new confidence in the future. Nature suddenly
assumed a more humane appearance: it once again was thought to re-
flect human emotions, and appeared eminently worthy of human ex-
ploration.

Classical and Medieval Precedents

What, then, was the past out of which, and eventually in contrast
to which, modernity developed? In the first place there was the clas-
sical culture, which had never ceased to influence the medieval one,
and which suddenly in fifteenth-century Italy intensified that influ-
ence. Particularly, the concept of form acquired a new significance.
For the Greeks, it had been both a physical quality and an intellectual
principle. Proportion was a quality of nature as well as a primary
attribute of the gods, who, by their formal perfection, surpassed the
perishable, imperfect humans. In Plato’s thought, the notion of form
implied the profound metaphysical principle that it belongs to the na-
ture of the real to appear and to do so in an orderly, intelligible way.
For a long time the Greeks had succeeded in preserving the
unique identity of their culture, despite its dispersion over such re-
mote islands as Sicily and such distant regions as Asia Minor and
Southern Italy. It continued to do so for a while even after the Helle-
nistic empires extended it to the entire Middle East. At the end of
that period Greek culture confronted its supreme challenge. It began
when, in the Septuagint translation, Jews opened their sacred books
to the Gentile oekumene. In Alexandria, now the intellectual capital
of the Greek world, where this event had occurred, the Jewish phi-
losopher Philo attempted to reconcile Jerusalem with Athens. But the
Greek mind felt a strong aversion to the idea of a God who no longer
formed a part of the cosmos but was its transcendent Creator. That
early Christians, steeped in Jewish theology, fared no better in the

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 The Form of Modernity 7

eyes of the Greeks appeared in the poor reception Paul’s speech re-
ceived on the Areopagus (Acts 17:32–34).
Christians did not give up the attempt to reconcile their faith
with Hellenic wisdom. Religiously oriented Neoplatonic thought
provided a fertile ground for dialogue. The Cappadocian Fathers
adopted much of Plotinus’s philosophy, and soon most of the Chris-
tian East followed. For the last of the great classical thinkers, the di-
vine still dwelled within the cosmos, yet at the same time transcended
it. This truce between Christian and ancient culture was not to last.
The tension between the two worldviews appeared when some of
the eighth-century Macedonian emperors of Byzantium, who consid-
ered the iconic representations of Christ and the saints to conflict
with the idea of a God hidden in impenetrable light, banned them
from the churches. Most Christians resisted, appealing to the mys-
tery of the Incarnation, which had forged an indissoluble link be-
tween God and human nature in the person of Christ. They prevailed.
But the impact of the same mystery of the Incarnation, which had
supported the return of orthodoxy in the East, eventually was to cause
the breakup of the Hellenic-Christian synthesis in the Latin West.
The problem arose in the wake of what was perhaps the most at-
tractive development of medieval Christianity: Francis of Assisi and
his thirteenth-century followers extended the effect of the Incarna-
tion to the entire created world. Even the image of Jesus changed. He
was not merely God’s eternal Word among us, but a concrete human
being. Francis concluded that Christ’s human nature itself deserved
to be honored and adored. The religious humanism he had initiated
blossomed into an artistic movement in which, contrary to the Greek
primacy of the universal, the highest spiritual meaning resided in the
individual. It was the time of the great innovators in painting, Ci-
mabue, Duccio, and Giotto, and in poetry, Dante, Petrarch, and Boc-
caccio. Soon it became apparent how much this new idea of individual
form conflicted with the classical one adopted by earlier Christian
culture, in which only the universal had intellectual birthright.
Against the background of this new vision, the Franciscan John
Duns Scotus accomplished an intellectual revolution. The doctor sub-
tilis understood that the Greek notion of form was inadequate for
expressing the mystery of Christ: it omitted what Christians of his

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 8 Religion and the Rise of Modern Culture

time had come to see as most essential, namely, the individuality of

the person of Christ. So he added to the ancient hierarchy of forms a
forma individualis to legitimate the unique thisness of the historical
Jesus. His move was not totally unprecedented. Plotinus himself (in
Enneads 4, 3, 7) had written that souls are formally individuated be-
fore becoming united to the body. Even Aquinas, concerned to pre-
serve the spiritual integrity of the soul after death, had declared it to
be unaffected by its physical embodiment (Summa Theologiae I, q.7,
a.2, and I, q.50, a.2). Nonetheless, reluctant to abandon the Greek
principle of universality altogether, he had qualified his position by
claiming that the human soul, though spiritual, attains individuality
through its relation to matter—the mysterious materia quantitate sig-
nata. Scotus went further. For him, individuality itself was a form,
the ultimate one in the Platonic hierarchy.

The Via Moderna and the New Humanist Form

Another Franciscan, William of Ockham, brought this develop-

ment to its conclusion when he denied that universals—including all
ancient forms—in any way exist. Everything in nature as well as in
the mind is singular. That a substance bears a certain resemblance to
another is a matter of subjective perception, not the effect of their
sharing a common nature. Ockham thereby totally abandoned the as-
sumption, deeply entrenched in Platonic thinking, that universal
forms exist in reality as well as in ideas. He admitted the need for
universal concepts and for names with a universal significance, but
asserted that universals existed neither beyond (Plato) nor inside re-
ality (Aristotle). They are mere constructions of the mind. Ockham’s
critique of form obviously spelled the end of the Greek cosmo-
theological synthesis. One might also assume it to be the end of me-
dieval philosophy. Yet the notion of form, both the classical and the
Christian, was to acquire new life in the humanist movement.
The rise of Italian humanism coincided with that of the nomi-
nalist via moderna in philosophy. At the surface the two movements
appear unrelated. Humanism unquestioningly accepted the form prin-
ciple as articulated by Plato and his followers. Indeed, the movement

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 The Form of Modernity 9

itself was first and foremost a new search for form through language.1
Having started as a rhetorical movement, humanism aimed at study-
ing the Latin writers and at imitating their style, not only in the an-
cient language but also in the vernacular. Humanists attempted to
revive the formal perfection of classical authors and generally ob-
jected to the late medieval language of Scholasticism. Nonetheless,
as Paul Kristeller has shown, humanism preserved a strong link with
the rhetorical tradition of the Middle Ages. Most humanists re-
mained loyal to the medieval worldview and, indeed, to much of its
philosophy.
Nominalist philosophy, though it undermined the ancient no-
tion of universal form, agreed with humanism on at least one crucial
issue: the supreme significance of language. It thereby added sub-
stantial weight to the rhetorical exercises of the humanists and, in
fact, contributed to their raising the practice of language into a pur-
suit of ideal form. According to Lorenzo Valla, the last and most ar-
ticulate of the early humanists, the nominalist conception of language
reduces philosophical concepts to their concrete, earthly origins and
thereby establishes a new, more direct link between thought and re-
ality. He regarded nominalist philosophy as needlessly complicated,
however, and he had no use for the nominalism of the Scholastics.
His theory may rightly be called a “humanist counter-nominalism”
(Charles Trinkaus).
The humanist movement characteristically stressed poetic and
artistic creativity. In one of his prose writings Dante defined the at-
titude that was to become typical of modern culture as one of un-
limited confidence in man’s creative power. Even as God created all
forms ex nihilo, so the poet in inventing metaphorical meaning cre-
ates a poetic form that did not exist before. Dante and most early hu-
manists regarded this creative power as a gift of God. The artists and
poets of the Renaissance increasingly attributed it to human genius.
All agreed on the ancient rule that art must be an imitation of nature.
They regarded nature itself as a work of art, though an impure one

1. Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen,
1924) (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1956), pp. 323–35.

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 10 Religion and the Rise of Modern Culture

that the artist must bring to formal perfection. The two currents, on
one side early humanism and the Renaissance, on the other the philo-
sophical via moderna, initiated modern culture.
Galileo’s thought presents the transition to the second modern
period. He drew from both sources of the early modern age. Confi-
dent, creative, artistically gifted, and deeply religious, he initially
had much in common with some of the Italian humanists. In his early
writings he refers to the divine wisdom as inherent in nature, causing
it to follow ideal laws of simplicity and regularity. Observation alone,
however, does not suffice to know a phenomenon: it must be broken
down into ideal elements. In his later work Galileo abandoned much
of this Platonic idealism and avoided constraining the complexity of
nature within the demands of philosophical ideals. Consequently
he attempted to capture the mathematical nature of motion as actu-
ally observed rather than as ideally projected. Moreover, observation
taught him that in the celestial sphere the same physical laws are
valid as the ones on earth. Hence, the laws of mechanics rule the en-
tire universe, not only the sublunary sphere, as ancient and many me-
dieval philosophers thought.

The Loss of Form in Post-Cartesian Thought

Galileo had continued to assume that truth is inherent in the na-

ture of reality. In this respect he differed from the position Descartes
and most thinkers of the later seventeenth and the eighteenth centu-
ries were to embrace, namely, that truth is achieved by the mind. To
produce truth, the mind must first transform nature into a representa-
tion. Instead of participating in nature’s immanent truth, the mind
has to perform a reconstruction of it. Descartes intended to establish
knowledge on the unshakable foundation of the mind’s own laws and
thus stop the flood of skepticism unleashed by nominalist theology.
According to this theology, divine omnipotence was not bound by
the restrictions of human reason. A lingering nominalism continued
to affect Descartes’ own philosophy, however, as when he attributes
the intuitive insight that 2+2=4 to a divine decree.
Doubts about the efficacy of Descartes’ a priori method in sci-
ence sprang up soon after he formulated it. Could nature’s course be

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 The Form of Modernity 11

described exhaustively or even functionally in mathematical terms?

Contrary to Descartes’ assumptions, Newton famously declared “Hy-
potheses non fingo.” He did in fact construe hypotheses, but avoided
doing so independently of observation. Yet the most serious ques-
tions about the applicability of Descartes’ mathematical approach
came from the budding life sciences. Buffon unsuccessfully tried to
apply the mechanistic method to the study of animal life and was
forced to abandon the effort.
In modern cosmology the notion of substance came to replace
that of form without major consequences. But because of the com-
plex relation between mind and body, that notion proved inadequate
for defining personal identity. Yet Descartes had no other option, if
he was to include all beings within a simple comprehensive world
system. To maintain the spiritual quality of the mind, he had to sepa-
rate it from the body as an independent “substance.” In his bodily
substance the person shares a mechanistic world common to all ma-
terial things. Though man surpasses the laws of mechanics, yet
through his body he indirectly forms a part of the world system. If
the body constituted a reality in its own right, it had to be called a
substance as well as the mind. Aristotelian and Scholastic philosophy
had escaped this dualism of body and soul. For both, the soul was
the form of the body, while still retaining a certain independence of
it. Aristotle spoke of the double function of one soul. Aquinas called
the soul forma substantialis subsistens, a term that embraced both
functions.
How much the replacement of form by substance militated
against the traditional position and indeed against Descartes’ own
fundamental insight appeared soon after his death. Materialists such
as La Mettrie and Helvétius argued that he had accepted half the ma-
terialist theory. Had he not declared that the entire animal world
formed part of a single material universe and was subject to me-
chanical laws? Why, then, had he inconsistently made an exception
for the mind? No essential difference separates human knowledge
from animal cognition. Condillac in his Treatise on Sensations had
shown that one as well as the other is derived from sensations caused
by physiological processes. Baron d’Holbach, the unanointed leader
of the French materialists, confidently concluded: “Man is a physical
being.” This, of course, marked the end of the form principle. Only
one homogeneously material nature remained.

dupre.indb 11 1/9/08 7:49:11 AM

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 CHAPTER X
Day was breaking. The luster of the moon had failed. Gaunt and grisly
the old ruin began to increase in visibility. The full, gray, prosaic light
emphasized details, whether of workmanship or wreck, which the silver
beams had been inadequate to show. It was difficult to say if the fine points
of ornamentation had the more melancholy suggestion in the wanton
spoliation where they were within easy reach, or in those heights and
sequestered nooks where distance had saved them from the hand of the
vandal. The lapse of time itself had wrought but scant deterioration. The
tints of the fresco of ceilings and borders were of pristine delicacy and
freshness in those rooms where the destroyed hearths had prevented fires
and precluded smoke, save that here and there a cobweb had veiled a
corner, or a space had gathered mildew from exposure to a shattered
window, or a trickling leak had delineated the trace of the falling drops
down the decorated wall.
All exemplified the taste of an earlier period, and where paper had been
used in great pictorial designs it fared more hardly than had the painting.
The vicissitudes of the voyage of Telemachus, portrayed in the hall, were
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and broken abysses. The filial adventurer was flung from the storied cliffs
into a Nirvana of blank plaster.
It had required some muscular force and some mental energy to destroy
the marble mantel-pieces. Here and there bits of the carving still lay about
the floor, the design thus grossly disfigured, showing with abashed effect
above the gaping cavity of the torn-out hearth.
The up-to-date man with his glass in his eye, one hand always ready to
readjust it, the fingers lightly slipped into the pocket of his trousers, his
attitude a trifle canted forward after the manner of the critical connoisseur,
was going about, exploring, discriminating and bemoaning. Now and again
he was joined by one of his fellow-passengers, who stood with his hat on
the back of his head, and gazed with blank, unresponsive eyes, and listened
in uncomprehending silence. The interior decoration of the old house
represented several periods. The salient fact of wreck and ruin was
apparent, however, to the most limited discernment, and the knots of
refugees from the Cherokee Rose discussed its woeful condition as they
wandered restlessly about. They expressed a doubt whether repair would
not cost more than the house was worth, argued on the legal effect of the
belated discovery of the quit-claim papers, and contemned the spirit of the
men in possession in the last forty years to allow so fine a thing in itself to
fall into such a desperate condition, while the lands appurtenant were
worked to the extremest capacity of money-making. There was a
disposition to deduce from the fact a suspicion on the part of the holders
that their title was vulnerable, and a sordid desire to make the most possible
out of the property while it was still in possession. It was always Floyd-
Rosney’s fate to be in a measure justified of circumstances, yet to seem at
fault. The question of mesne profits in case of the recovery of property did
not suggest itself for some time, and when it did arise it was submitted that
mesne profits were mighty hard to get and often could not be made from the
interloper.
“They can make the money out of Floyd-Rosney, though,—he has got
money to burn. For one, I don’t care if he does lose. It would be outrageous
for him to defend the suit for recovery and plead the statute of limitations,”
said the fat man, who did not mince his opinions.
“But he may win out,” said the broker. “Possession is nine-tenths of the
law,—and for forty years under a decree of the Chancery court.”
“Forty thousand years would do him no good in the face of that release,”
protested another. “It was wrongful possession from the beginning. Floyd-
Rosney is a trespasser here and nothing more.”
“But can you call a man a ‘trespasser’ who holds under color of title?
His is an adverse possession,” argued the broker.
And the wrangle began anew with revived spirit. It was well, perhaps,
that the refugees had a subject of discussion so charged with immediate and
general interest, since they had no resource but to roam the old place until
breakfast should be announced. After this meal they would resume their
fitful wanderings till a boat should be sighted. They had turned out of their
comfortable quarters when Captain Treherne had been brought to the
restricted inhabited space of the old building, relinquishing the shake-down
and the fire to him and his special ministrants.
Now and again a speculation concerning breakfast agitated the group of
men, and one venturesome spirit made a journey down the quaking old rear
verandah to the kitchen, stepping over gaps where the flooring had been
torn up for fuel and walking the rotting sills when the hiatus was too wide
to be leaped. His errand to expedite breakfast was, apparently, without
result.
“Yes, sah,” said the waiter-cook, into whose gloomy soul morning had
yet cast no illuminating ray. “I gwine ter dish up when de breakfast is
cooked,—nuver knowed you wanted it raw. Cap’n nuver treated me right,—
no range, no cook-fixin’s,—nuthin’—an’ breakfast expected to be smokin’
on de table ’fore de fog is off de river. Naw, Sah,—ef you kin cook it any
quicker, why cook it yourself, Sah. I ain’t got no dijections to your cookin’
it.”
Upon his return from his tour of discovery, being earnestly interrogated
as to the prospects by his fellow-refugees, the gentleman gave this sage
advice: “If you don’t want to have to knock an impudent nigger down you
will stay here and eat breakfast when he has a mind to serve it.”
The fog clung to the face of the river. It stood blank and white at the
great portal of the house, and sifted through the shattered windows, and
silence dominated it. One felt infinitely removed from all the affairs of life.
The world was not even a neighbor. Time seemed annihilated. It could not
be that yesterday, at this hour, they stood on the stanch deck of the
Cherokee Rose, or that only the week before they trod the streets of
Memphis, or Vicksburg, or Helena. That white pall seemed to shut off all
the possibilities of life, and there was a sort of shock, as of a revulsion of
nature, when there came through this flocculent density the sound of a
horse’s hoofs on the graveled drive, and then, on the portico, the ponderous
measured tread of a man of weight and bulk.
He was in the hall before the group was aware of his entrance. Hale and
strong, although of advanced years, well dressed in a sober fashion, grave,
circumspect, reticent of manner, he had turned toward the second door
before a word of his intent could be asked. A gesture had answered his
inquiry for Captain Hugh Treherne. He entered, without knocking, and the
door closed on silence. The group in the hall stared at one another, aware, in
some subtle way, of a crisis which the simple facts did not explain.
Suddenly a wild cry of defiance rose from within,—a quivering, aged
voice full of rancor and of rage.
“I will resist to the death,—begone, begone, sir, before I do you a
mischief.”
It was the voice of Colonel Kenwynton, furious, fierce, beyond
placation, beyond argument, beyond self-control.
A murmur of remonstrance rose for a moment. Then the group outside
followed the example of the stranger and, without ceremony, burst in at the
door.
The stranger stood in quiet composure with his back to the fire while the
old Colonel, his bushy white eyebrows bent above eyes that flashed all the
lightnings of his youth, waved his hand toward the door, exclaiming with an
intonation of contempt that must have scathed the most indurated
sensibilities, “Begone, sir,—out of the door, if you like, or I will throw you
out of the window.” He stamped his foot as if to intimidate a cur. “Begone!
Rid us of your intolerable presence.”
Captain Treherne, who had lain all the early morning hours on the rugs
and blankets on the floor, seeking to recuperate from his terrible experience
of constraint, had arisen with an alertness scarcely to be expected. He laid a
restraining hand on the old man’s arm. Colonel Kenwynton placed his own
trembling hand over it.
“Captain Treherne is among his friends who will revenge it dearly if you
attempt the least injury. Insane! He is most obviously, most absolutely sane,
and on that fact I will stake my soul’s salvation. Any attempt at his
incarceration,—you despicable trickster, I have no doubt you turn your
penny out of this burial alive,—before God, sir, I’ll make you rue it. I will
publish you throughout the length and the breadth of the land, and I will
beat you with this stick within an inch of your life.”
He brandished his heavy cane, and, despite his age and his depleted
strength, he was a most formidable figure as he advanced. Once more
Treherne caught at his arm. So tense were its muscles that he could not pull
it down, but he hung upon it with all his weight.
The stranger eyed Colonel Kenwynton with the utmost calm, a placidity
devoid alike of fear and of the perception of offense. He spoke in a quiet,
level tone, with an undercurrent of gentle urgency.
“Sane or insane, Hugh Treherne never intentionally deceived a friend,”
he remarked composedly. “Tell him the facts, Captain Treherne,—he
deserves to know them.”
He met at the moment Treherne’s eye. A long look passed between them,
—a terrible look, fraught with some deep mystery, of ghastly intendment,
overwhelming, significant, common to both, which neither would ever
reveal. There was in it something so nerve-thrilling, so daunting, that
Colonel Kenwynton’s bold, bluff spirit revolted.
“None of your hypnotism here!” he cried, again brandishing his stick. “I
will not stand by and see you seek to subjugate this man’s mind with your
subtle arts. So much as cast your evil eye upon him again and I will make
you swallow a pistol-ball and call it piety. (Where is that damned revolver
of mine?)” He clapped his hand vainly to his pistol-pocket.
“Hugh,” the stranger’s tone was even more gently coercive than before.
“Tell him, Hugh. He is not a man to delude.”
“Colonel,” cried Treherne, still hanging on the old man’s arm, “this
gentleman means me nothing but kindness. He would not,—he could not,—
why, don’t you know he was a surgeon in the Stones’ River campaign? For
old sake’s sake he would do me no harm.”
Colonel Kenwynton himself looked far from the normal, his white hair
blowsing about his face, fiery red, his blue eyes blazing with a bluer flame,
his muscles knotted and standing out as he clutched his stick and
brandished it.
“I don’t care if he was commander-in-chief, he shall not mesmerize you,
if that is what he calls his damnable tricks. Hugh,—forty years! Oh, my
dear boy, that I should have lost sight of you for forty years, what with my
debts, and my worries, and my shifts to keep a whole roof over my head,
and a whole coat on my back. Forty years,—I thought you were dead. I had
been told you were dead,—that is your Cousin Thomas’s work,—I’ll haul
him over the coals. And you as sane as I am all the time! Begone, sir!” and
once more he waved his stick at the stranger. “I will see to it that every
process known to the law is exhausted on you! The vials of wrath shall be
emptied! Oh, it is too late for apology, for repentance, for sniveling!”
For still the stranger’s manner was mild and gravely conciliatory. “Oh,
Hugh,” he said reproachfully, “why don’t you tell him?”
 Once more their glances met.
“Colonel,” said Treherne falteringly, “I am not sane. I admit it.”
“I know better,” Colonel Kenwynton vociferated, facing around upon
him. “You are as sane as I am, as any man. This is hypnotism. I saw how
that fellow looked at you. I marked him well. Why, sanity is in your every
intonation.”
Treherne took heart of grace. “But, Colonel, this is a lucid interval.
Sometimes I am not myself,—in fact, for many years I was absent.” He
used the euphemism with a downcast air, as if he could not brook a plainer
phrase. Then, visibly bracing himself, “It was the effects of the old wound,
—the sabre cut on the skull. It injured the brain. I have persuasions—
obsessions.” His words faltered. His eyes dilated. There was a world of
unexpressed meaning in his tone, as he lowered his voice, scarcely moving
his lips. “Sometimes I am possessed by the Devil.”
“We will not speak of that to-day,” said the stranger suavely.
“It is impossible!” exclaimed the Colonel dogmatically. “Look at the
facts,—you come to me out on that sand-bar to induce me to aid you in the
search for the Ducie treasure and title papers, their recovery is due to your
effort and, in all probability, the restoration of this great estate to its rightful
owners.”
“Ah,” exclaimed the stranger with intense interest. He look elated,
inordinately elated.
“And because you had forgotten in the lapse of time—forty years,—the
exact spot where you and Archie Ducie hid the box away, and the wind was
blowing, and the rain imminent, I put it off—like a fool—and these fiends
of river pirates, or gipsies, or what not, got the information from you when
you were asleep,—talking in your sleep.”
“Subconscious cerebration,” murmured the alienist.
“And because they did not exactly understand the terms of architecture
you used they brought you down here to force you to point out the spot, and
bound and gagged you,—oh,—Hugh, my heart bleeds for you!”
“But can’t you think for him a little, Colonel—can’t you advise him?
Forty years of seclusion does not fit a man to cope with the world without
some preparation for the encounter,—he was in danger of his life, in falling
among these thieves. He incurred a jeopardy which I know he esteems even
greater. He is on the verge of a most extraordinary cure,—in all my
experience I have never known its parallel. Any disastrous chance might yet
prevent its completion. Now that he has accomplished all that he so desired
to do, can’t you advise him to go back with me to treatment, regimen,
safety.”
“Not unless I know what ails him,” said the Colonel stoutly.
Once more the eyes of Treherne and the stranger met, with that dark and
dreadful secret between them. Colonel Kenwynton appraised the glance and
its subtle significance, and fell to trembling violently.
“It is something that we cannot mention this day,—this day is clear,”
said the alienist firmly.
“I cannot go back,—I cannot go back,—and meet it there,” cried
Treherne wildly. “It is waiting for me,—where I have known it so long. I
shall pass the vestibule, perhaps,—but there in the hall”—he paused,
shivering.
“You see that, as yet, you cannot protect yourself in the world, even now,
when you are as sane as the Colonel. But, for the accident that brought
these people here, you might have been murdered by those miscreants for
the secret hiding-place that had slipped your memory. You might have been
heedlessly left on the floor bound and gagged to die. It was the merest
chance that I happened to think you might be at Duciehurst.”
Treherne was trembling in every fiber. Cold drops of moisture had
started on his brow. His eyes were dilated and quickly glancing, as he
contemplated this obsession to which neither dared to refer openly, lest the
slight bonds that held the mania within bounds, the exhaustion of the spasm
of insanity, called the lucid interval, be overstrained and snap at once.
“I believe I would not meet it here, in the world,—away from where it
has been so long,” he said doggedly.
“What would you do if you should? You might hurt yourself,—and
Hugh, and this you would deplore more, you might injure some one else,”
said the doctor.
Treherne suddenly turned, throwing his arms about Colonel Kenwynton
in a paroxysm of energy.
“Colonel, lead the way. Go with me, for I would follow you to hell if
you led the charge. God knows I have done that often enough. Lead the
charge, Colonel!”
“Yes, come with us, Colonel,” said the alienist cordially,—it could but
seem a sinister sort of hospitality. “We should be delighted to entertain you
for a few days, or, indeed, as long as you will stay. It is not a public
institution, but we have a beautiful place,—haven’t we, Hugh?—something
very extra in the way of conservatories. Hugh has begun to take much
interest in our orchids. It is a good distance, but Mr. Ducie drove me down
here from Caxton with his fast horse in less time than I could have
imagined.”
“Mr. Ducie?” said Adrian Ducie, with a start. “Where is he? Has he
gone?”
The doctor stared as if he himself had taken leave of his senses. “You
remember,” he said confusedly, blending the reminder with an air of
explanation to the group generally, “that when we had that game of billiards
at your hotel in Caxton last evening I asked you a question or two about the
Duciehurst estate; I didn’t like to say much, but your replies gave me the
clew as to where Captain Treherne had gone after his escape from the
Glenrose sanatorium. He had inquired about Duciehurst as soon as he began
to recover his memory, and seemed to recur to the subject and to brood
upon it. The idea stayed with me all night, for I was very anxious, and about
daybreak I took the liberty of rousing you by telephone to ask if the roads
here from Caxton were practicable for a motor-car. You remember, don’t
you?”
He paused, looking in some surprise at Adrian.
“You told me,” he continued, “that the roads would be impracticable
after these rains, and as I disclosed the emergency, in my great perturbation
for Captain Treherne’s safety, you offered to drive me down, as you had an
exceptionally speedy horse which you kept for your easy access from
Caxton to the several plantations that you lease in this vicinity.”
Captain Treherne, the possession of his faculties as complete at the
moment as if he had never known the aberrations of a mania, listened with
an averse interest and a lowering brow to these details of the preparations
made for his capture and reincarceration. The alienist did not seem to
observe his manner but went on, apparently at haphazard. “I regretted to put
you to so great an inconvenience at this hour, but you relieved my mind by
saying that you knew that Captain Treherne had been a valued friend of
your uncle’s, and that you not only felt it incumbent on you to be of any
service possible to him, but esteemed it a privilege.”
“But where,—where is Randal Ducie now?” asked Adrian, turning
hastily to the door.
The doctor’s face was a picture of uncomprehending perplexity. “Why,
isn’t this you?” he asked.
“Oh, no. It is my brother,” exclaimed Adrian, amidst a burst of laughter
that relieved the tension of the situation. Several followed from the room to
witness, at a distance not very discreet, the meeting of the facsimile
brothers.
Randal Ducie had hitched the horse and the four-seated phaeton which
they had had the precaution to provide to the old rack, and, awaiting the
return of the physician, had strolled aimlessly up the pavement through the
rolling fog to the steps of the portico. There he was suddenly confronted by
the image of himself. He looked startled for a moment; then, with a rising
flush and a brightening eye, ascended the flight with an eager step.
“Hello,” said one brother cavalierly.
“Hello yourself,” responded the other.
“Let me show you how the fellows kiss the cheek in old France,” said
Adrian.
“Let me show you how the fellows punch the head in old Mississippi,”
said Randal.
There was a momentary scuffle, and then, arm in arm and both near to
tears, they strolled together down the long portico of their ancestral home
with much to say to each other, after their separation, and much to hear.
The group of men at the door, looking laughingly after them, might
readily have discriminated the moment of the disclosure of the discovery of
the Duciehurst treasure with the release of the mortgage foreclosed so long
ago. Randal paused abruptly, facing round upon his brother and apparently
listening in stunned amaze. They were too distant for words to be
distinguished, but his voice came on the air, loud and excited, in eager
questioning. He was, evidently, about to turn within the house, possibly to
have the evidence of his eyes to the intendment and validity of this paper,
when Adrian, by a gesture, checked him. The fog was beginning to lift, and
the figures of the two men were imposed on a vista of green, where the
sunlight in a delicate clarity after the rains, in a refined glister of matutinal
gold, was beginning to send long glinting beams among the glossy foliage
of the magnolias, and to light with reverent tapering shafts the solemn aisles
of the weeping willows where the tombstones reared unchanged their
mortuary memorials, unmindful of sheen or shadow, of fair weather or foul,
even of time, as the years came and went, a monition only of death and a
prophecy of eternity.
“There is one thing I must tell you, Ran,” Adrian said, laying both hands
on his brother’s shoulders.
Randal threw up his head, excited, expectant, apprehensive.
“She is here,—one of the passengers of the Cherokee Rose.”
“She?” exclaimed Randal in blank mystification. “Who?”
Adrian was embarrassed. It seemed as if even an old love could hardly
be of so sluggish a divination,—as if Randal must have probed his meaning.
He reflected that it might be some keenly sensitive consciousness that could
not yet bear the open recognition of the facts. Between them the subject of
the sudden jilting had never been mentioned, save in Randal’s one letter
apprising his brother that the engagement was off, by reason of the lady’s
change of mind, which came, indeed, later than the item in the Paris
journals, chronicling news of interest to Americans sojourning abroad, and
giving details of a new betrothal in a circle of great wealth and position. He
himself had never known such frenzy of emotion, of rage, and humiliation,
and compassion, and pride. The event had racked him with vicarious woe. It
had dealt him a wound that would not heal, but now and again burst into
new and undreamed of phases of anguish. Even yet he shrank from taking
her name on his lips—and to Randal himself, of all people. Yet Randal must
be told,—he must not meet her unaware. The pause of indecision continued
so long as they stood thus, Adrian’s hands on his brother’s shoulders, that
Randal’s eyes dilated with a surprise obviously unaffected. He lifted his
own hands to his brother’s elbows, and thus facing each other he said:
“What of it? I am in a hurry,—I want to see that release. Who is this ‘she’?”
“Why, Randal,—it is Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,—Paula Majoribanks, that was,
and her husband and child.”
There was still a pause, blank of significance.
“Well,” said Randal, meditatively, at length, “they won’t like that quit-
claim paper one little bit of a bit.” There was a laugh in his brilliant hazel
eyes, and it touched the finely cut corners of his lips. His fresh face was as
joyous, as candid, as full of the tender affection of this reunion as if no
word of a troubled past had been spoken to jar it.
Oh, that she should come between them on this day when they were so
close to each other, Adrian reflected, when absence had made each so dear,
when there was so much to say and to do, when separation impended, and
time was so short. He felt that he could hardly endure to have their mutual
pleasure marred, that he could not brook to see Randal abashed in her
presence, and conscious, disconcerted and at a disadvantage before her
husband. Above all, and before all, he winced for Randal’s pain in the
reopening of these poignant old wounds to bleed and ache anew.
His arms tightened and slipped up from his brother’s shoulders and
around his neck. “Oh, Randal, will it hurt you much?”
Randal looked grave. “A lawsuit is always a troublesome, long-drawn-
out bother; I shrink from the suspense and the expense. But I am mighty
glad to have the chance to be hurt that way.”
“Oh, I meant will it give you pain to meet Paula again as Mrs. Floyd-
Rosney?”
“What?” Randal’s hearty young voice rang out with a note of
amazement. “Not a bit. What do you take me for?”
“I was afraid—you would feel,” faltered Adrian.
“Is that what’s the matter with you? You look awfully muffish.”
“Well,—as you loved her once,—I thought——”
“That was a case of mistaken identity,” said Randal. “Can’t you realize
that it is just because she could prefer another man; that she could think a
thought of change; that her plighted faith could be broken; that her love,—
or what we called love,—could take unto itself wings and fly away; that she
was only an illusion, a delusion, a snare. I never loved the woman she is.”
“She is very beautiful,” hesitated Adrian.
“When I thought her mind and heart matched her face she seemed
beautiful to me, too,” said Randal.
“You will think so still.”
“Kid, you know nothing about love. A man truly in love may have been
attracted by beauty, but it is not that which holds him. It is a unity of soul;
he finds a complement of mind; he has a sense of sympathy and, through
thick and thin, a partisan, constant faith in a reciprocal heart. He gets used
to the prettiest face and it makes little impression on him,—just as he
wouldn’t notice, after a time, a fine costume. She is nothing that I imagined.
She is not now, and she never was the ideal I loved. I don’t regret her. Don’t
grieve for me, little boy. And now will you be so kind as to take those paws
off my neck,—you are half strangling me with your fraternal anxiety.
Behold, I will smite you under the fifth rib.”
There was once more a brief, boyish scuffle. Then the two turned and
came walking decorously back to the group on the portico. The exterior
aspect of the old ruin had an added majesty by daylight, despite the more
obvious injuries of wreckage. Its fine proportions, the blended elegance and
stateliness of its design, the richness even in the restraint of its
ornamentation, all showed with telling effect, apart from the wild work
within of the marauders. These details the rude usage it had received could
not affect. It might have stood as an imposing architectural example of a
princely residence of the date of its erection, and it was impossible to gaze
upon it with a sense of possessing it, and feel no glow of gratulation.
“Why, the item of glass alone would be a corker,” a practical man was
saying, walking backward down the stone pavement and surveying the great
black gaps of the shattered windows.
The two brothers cast a meaning glance at each other, the discussion, of
which this was obviously a fragment, evidently looked to a rehabilitation of
the mansion under a change of owners, for, certainly, it would seem that
Floyd-Rosney had neither the interest nor the associations to induce him to
set up his staff of rest here. It was only a straw, but it showed how the wind
of opinion set, and the brothers were in the frame of mind to discern
propitious omens. The sun was bright on the over-grown spaces of the lawn.
The Cherokee rose hedge that divided it from the family graveyard, and
continued much further, had spread with its myriad unpruned sprangles
beyond the space designed for a boundary, growing many feet wide.
Beneath the great arch it described stretched a long tunnel-like arbor,
throughout its whole extent, dark, mystic, in the shadow of its evergreen
leaves. By reason of some natural attraction which quaint nooks have for
children, Marjorie and little Ned had discovered this strange passageway,
and were running in and out of the darksome space, with their shrilly sweet
cries of pretended fright and real excitement, each time venturing a little
farther than before. The mists had lifted from the river, which spread a
broad, rippling surface of burnished copper in the sunshine under an azure
sky. There was no sign of approaching craft, no curl of smoke above the
woods beyond the point to herald deliverance by a steamboat. One of the
old ladies had established herself on her suitcase on the topmost step of the
flight from the portico, and it would, indeed, have been a swift steamer that
could have escaped her vigilance and passed without being signaled.
Adrian paused good-naturedly. “You need give yourself no uneasiness,
madam,—it will require half an hour’s time at least for a steamboat to pass
this place from the moment that she is sighted,” he said, in polite
commiseration.
But the old lady sat tight. “They tell me there is a crazy man in there,”
she declared lugubriously. She would leave by the first opportunity.
“He is going presently in a phaeton across the country,” Adrian
explained. “There is no possible danger from him, however,—he has only
occasional attacks. He is perfectly at himself to-day. But he will not be
going on the boat.” This remark was unlucky, as it increased her anxiety to
embark.
Randal had lifted his hat after a moment’s pause, and passed on without
his brother. He hesitated, looked back, then entered the vestibule, and came
suddenly face to face with Paula.
It had been five years since they had met and then it was as lovers. She
had not dreamed of seeing him here. She thought him ten miles away at
Caxton. She had never been more brilliantly, more delicately beautiful. Her
burnished redundant hair that was wont to resemble gold, and to seem so
elaborately tended, had now a luminous fibrous effect at the verges of the
smooth pompadour roll that had been hastily tossed up from her forehead.
She even appeared taller, more slender than usual, since she wore a clinging
gown of princess effect, in one piece, and, obviously, of matutinal usage, in
more conventional surroundings. The flowing sleeve showed her bare arm
from the elbow, exquisitely white and soft. The V-shaped neck gave to view
her delicate snowy throat rising from a mist of lace. The strange large
flower-pattern cast over a ground of thick sheeny white was an orchid with
a gilded verge, and in the mauve and pearl tones she, too, looked like some
rare and radiant bloom. Her eyes were sweet and expectant—her step swift.
She was on her way to call back the child. She paused suddenly,
dumfounded, disconcerted, confronted with the past.
 She recognized Randal in one instant, despite his resemblance to his
brother, and for her life she could not command her countenance. It was
alternately red and white in the same moment. She felt that his confusion
would heighten hers, yet she could not forgive his composure, his well-
bred, graceful, gracious manner, his clear, vibrant, assured voice when he
exclaimed, holding out his hand: “Mrs. Floyd-Rosney—this is an
unexpected pleasure. I have this moment heard that you are here. Is that
your husband?” For Floyd-Rosney had just issued from the dining-room
and was advancing down the hall toward her with an unmistakable,
connubial frown. “Will you kindly present me?”
It seemed for a moment as if Floyd-Rosney had never heard of the
simple ceremony of an introduction. Paula could not secure and hold his
attention. He passed Randal over with a casual, unnoting glance, and began
to take her to task in no measured terms.
“Why do you allow the child to chase back and forth in that dark tunnel
under the Cherokee rose hedge? He will be scratched to pieces by the
briars, the first thing you know. Why is he with that madcap tom-boy,
Marjorie Ashley? Where is his nurse, anyhow?”
“Why, she is completely knocked out by the fatigue and excitements,—
she is quite old, you remember,” said Paula meekly, seeking to stem his tide
of words. “I was just coming out to play nurse myself. But stop a minute. I
want to——”
“I won’t stop a minute,—I don’t care what you want,”—her aspect
suddenly seemed to strike his attention. “And why do you trick yourself out
in such duds at such a time?”
“Because this is so easy to put on,—and I had to dress the baby,” Paula
was near to tears. “But I want to——” she mended the phrase,—“This is
Mr. Ducie; he wishes to meet you.”
Floyd-Rosney turned his imperious gaze on Ducie with a most
unperceiving effect. “Why, of course, I know it is Mr. Ducie,—have you
taken leave of your senses, Paula? Mr. Ducie and I have seen enough of
each other on this trip to last us the rest of our natural existence. I can’t talk
to you now, Mr. Ducie,—if you have anything to say to me you can
communicate it to my lawyers; I will give you their address.”
“It is not business. It is an introduction,” explained Paula, in the
extremity of confusion, while Randal, placid and impassive, looked on
inscrutably. “Mr. Ducie wishes to make your acquaintance.”
“Well, he has got it,—if that is any boon,” Floyd-Rosney stared at her,
stupefied.
“But this is the brother,—Mr. Randal Ducie,—the one you have never
met.” In Paula’s haste to elude her husband’s impatient interruption she
could scarcely speak. Her mouth was full of words, but they tripped and fell
over each other in her agitation with slips and grotesque mispronunciations.
“Hoh!” said Floyd-Rosney, permitting himself to be enlightened at last.
“Why this thing of twin brothers is no end of a farce.” He shook hands with
Randal with some show of conventionality. He, too, was mindful of the
past. But so impatient was his temperament with aught that did not suit his
play that he was disposed to cavil on the probabilities. “Are you sure,”—
then he paused.
“That I am myself,—reasonably sure,” said Randal, laughing. And now
that Adrian was coming in at the door Floyd-Rosney surveyed them both as
they stood together with a sort of disaffected but covert arrogance.
“Well—I can see no sort of difference,” he declared.
“Oh, the difference is very obvious,” said Paula, struggling to assert her
individuality.
“I should thank no man for taking the liberty of looking so much like
me,” said Floyd-Rosney, seeking to compass a casual remark. Indeed, but
for the pressure of old associations, the necessity of taking into
consideration the impression made upon the by-standers, all conversant,
doubtless, with the former relations of the parties, for several passersby had
paused, attracted by the opportunity for the comparison of the twins side by
side, Floyd-Rosney would have dismissed the Messrs. Ducie and their
duplicate countenance with a mere word.
“I didn’t expect we should keep up the resemblance,” remarked Adrian.
“While I was abroad I did not know what Randal was getting to look like,
and, therefore, I didn’t know which way to look myself. But now that we
are together we each have the advantage of a model.”
The broker seemed to gravely ponder this strange statement, the others
laughed, and Paula saw her opportunity to terminate the contretemps. “I’ll
call the baby in,” she said, and slipped deftly past and out into the sunshine.
 Paula’s instinct was to remove the cause of her husband’s irritation, not
because she valued Floyd-Rosney’s peace of mind or hoped to reinstate his
pose of dignity. But she could not adjust herself to her habitual humility
with him in Randal Ducie’s presence,—to listen to his instruction, to accept
his rebukes, to obey his commands, to laugh at his vague and infrequent
jests, to play the abased jackal to his lion. She would efface herself; she
would be null; she would do naught to bring down wrath on her devoted
head,—but beyond this her strength was inadequate. So she hustled the two
children into the house and up the stairs, and out of the great front windows
of the hall where she told them to stand on the balcony above the heads of
the group below and watch for the appearance of a boat.
Now and then their sweet, reedy tones floated down as they conversed
with each other at the extreme limit of their vocal pitch, breaking,
occasionally, into peals of laughter. Their steps sounded like the tread of
half a dozen pairs of feet, so rapidly and erratically they ran back and forth.
At intervals they paused and stood at the iron balustrade, surveying the
scene from every point of view, up the river and down the river, and again
across, in the zealous discharge of their delegated duty to watch for a boat.
Below reigned that luxurious sense of quiet which ensues on the cessation
of a turbulent commotion. Groups strolled to and fro on the portico, or
found seats on the broad stone sills of the windows that opened upon it.
Paula, in her white and lilac floriated house-dress, walked a little apart,
pausing occasionally and glancing up to caution the two children on the
balcony to be wary how they leaned their weight on the grillwork of the
iron balustrade, as some rivet might be rusted and weakened.
Hildegarde had found her rough gray suit impracticable because of the
drenching rains of yesterday and was freshly arrayed in a very chic street
costume of royal blue broadcloth, trimmed with bands of chinchilla fur,
with a muff and hat to match. She was standing near a window, on the sill
of which the Major, wrapped in a rug and his overcoat, was ensconced,
having been brought forth for a breath of air. He had a whimsical look of
discovery on his pallid and wrinkled face. She was recalling to him a world
which he had forgotten so long ago that it had all the flavor of a new
existence.
“I can’t give you any idea of the scenery en route, Major,”—she was
describing a trip to the far west,—“in fact I slept the whole way. You see,
my social duties were very onerous last spring. Our club had determined to
give twelve dinner dances during the season, and the weather became hot
unusually early, and so many people were leaving town that as we were
pledged to twelve we were compelled to give four of the dinner dances
during the last week and my head was in a whirl. There was the Adelantado
ball, too, and several very elaborate luncheons, and two or three teas every
afternoon, and what between the indigestion and the two-step lumbago I
was in a state of collapse on the journey west.”
“That was a novel campaign,” remarked the old soldier.
“It was a forced march,” declared Hildegarde. “I didn’t revive until I
heard dance music again in the Golden City. Let me prop your head up
against the window frame on my muff, Major. Oh, yes, it is very pretty,—all
soft gray and white.” She made a point of describing everything in detail for
his sightless vision. “You might get a nap in this fresh air,—for it is a
‘pillow muff.’ Yes, indeed,” watching his trembling fingers explore its soft
densities, “it is very fine, but I won’t mention the awful sum it cost my
daddy lest such a conscienceless pillow give you the nightmare.”
The air had all that bland luxurious quality so characteristic of the
southern autumn. A sense was rife in the sunlit spaces of a suspension of
effort. The growths of the year were complete; the inception of the new was
not yet in progress. No root stirred; there was never a drop of sap distilled;
not a twig felt the impetus of bourgeonning anew. Naught was apposite to
the season save some languorous dream, too delicate, too elusive even for
memory. It touched the lissome grace of the willow-wands, bare and silvery
and flickering in the imperceptible zephyrs. It lay, swooning with
sweetness, in the heart of a late rose which found the changing world yet so
kind that not a petal wilted in fear of frost. It silvered the mists and held
them shimmering and spellbound here and there above the shining pearl-
tinted water. It was not summer, to be sure, but the apotheosis of the
departing season. Those far gates of the skies were opening to receive the
winged past, and, surely, some bright reflection of a supernal day had fallen
most graciously on all the land.
“For my part, since that deal is over and done with by this time, I don’t
care how long I have to wait for a boat,—it can neither mar nor make so far
as I am concerned,” said the broker, as he puffed his cigar and walked with
long, meditative strides up and down the stone pavement.
 Floyd-Rosney did not concur in this view. He had expected all the early
hours that some of the neighboring negroes would come to the house,
attracted by the rumors of the commotions enacted there during the night.
Thus he could hire a messenger to take a note or a telephone message to the
nearest livery establishment and secure a conveyance for himself and
family to the railroad station some ten miles distant. He feared that hours,
nay a day or so, might elapse before one of the regular packets plying the
river might be expected to pass. Those already in transit had, doubtless,
“tied up” during the storm, and now waited till the current should compass
the clearance of the débris of the hurricane floating down the river. The
steamers advertised to leave on their regular dates had not cast off, in all
probability, but lay supine in their allotted berths till the effects of the storm
should be past, and thus would not be due here for twelve or twenty-four
hours, according to the distance of their point of departure.
As, however, time went on and the old house stood all solitary in the gay
morning light as it had in the sad moon-tide, Floyd-Rosney reflected that no
one had gone forth from the place except the robbers and the roustabouts
who had rowed the party down from the Cherokee Rose, returning thither
immediately. It was, therefore, improbable that any rumor was rife of the
temporary occupation of the Duciehurst mansion. Hence the absence of
curiosity seekers. Moreover, even were the circumstances known, every
human creature in the vicinity with the capacity to stand on its feet and
open and close its fingers was in the cotton fields this day, for the sun’s rays
had already sufficiently dried off the plant, and the industry of cotton-
picking, even more than time and tide, waits for nobody. For “cotton is
money,—maybe more, maybe less, but cotton is money every time,”
according to the old saying. These snowy level fields were rich with coin of
the republic. The growing staple was visible wealth, scarcely needing the
transmuting touch of trade. No! of all the wights whom he might least
expect to see it was any cotton-picker, old or young, of the region.
There being, evidently, no chance of a messenger, he had half a mind, as
his impatience of the detention increased, to go himself in search of means
of telephonic communication. But, apart from his spirit of leisure and his
habit of ease, his prejudices were dainty, and he looked upon the miry
richness of the Mississippi soil as if it were insurmountable. To be sure,
now and again he affected a day of sylvan sport, when, with dog and gun,
he cared as little as might be for mud, or rain, or sleet, or snow; but then, he
was caparisoned as a Nimrod, and burrs and briers, stains and adhesive
mire, were all the necessary accessories, and of no consideration. In his
metropolitan attire to step out knee deep in a soil made up of river detritus,
the depth and blackness of which are the boast and glory of the cotton belt,
was scarcely to be contemplated if an alternative was possible.
Suddenly a cry smote the air with electrical effect. “A boat! A boat!”
 CHAPTER XI
The auspicious announcement came first from the balcony. Then the cry
“A boat! A boat!” was taken up by the group on the portico, and echoed by
those within, pouring out in eager expectation through the vestibule or the
windows that opened to the floor. Floyd-Rosney experienced a moment of
self-gratulation on his prudential hesitation. He might have otherwise been
half a mile off, plunging through slough and switch-cane, or the sharp
serrated blades of the growths of saw-grass that edged the lake, before he
could gain the smooth ways of the turn-rows of the cotton fields. All knew
that considerable time must needs elapse from the moment the boat was
sighted, far up the river, before it could pass this point. But shawls were
strapped, gloves, wraps, hats, gathered together, toilet articles tumbled
hastily into Gladstone bags, trunks and suitcases. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, with
incomparable quickness, had shifted into a gown of taupe cloth, with a coat
to match, and with a large hat, trimmed with ostrich plumes of the same
shade, on her golden hair, in lieu of the rain-drenched traveling attire of
yesterday.
After a few moments of this pandemonium of preparation all eyes were
turned toward the river. Vacant it was, sunlit, a certain play of the swift
current betokening the added impetus of the recent heavy rainfall and the
influx of its swollen tributaries from the region to the northward. Not even a
coil of smoke showed above the forest where the river curved.
“The packet must be rounding the point,” said Floyd-Rosney hopefully.
“Did you see the smoke above the trees, darling?” Paula called out to the
eager little man, now racing joyfully about the balcony, now pausing to
point at an object in the offing with his tiny forefinger.
“No, mamma; the boat; the boat!”
Marjorie, leaning on the iron rail, was gazing with eager eyes in vain
search.
“It seems to me that we ought to be able to see the boat from the portico
as soon as he can from the balcony,” said the broker.
An adequate reason was presently presented for the advantage of the
balcony as an outlook, lifted so high above the portico.
 The boat lay very flat on the surface,—a shanty-boat!
“Why, Eddie,” cried Marjorie, with an inflection of poignant
disappointment,—she, too, had been looking for the towering chimneys, the
coil of black smoke, backward blown in the smooth progress of a packet,
the white guards, the natty little pilot-house, and only casually she had
chanced to descry the tiny flat object drifting with the current that carried it
far in toward the point. “That is a shanty-boat,—we don’t travel on that
kind of boat.”
The child’s pink and white face was crestfallen in a moment. Language
seemed to fail him as he gazed disconsolate. Then he sought reassurance.
“Him is a boat,” he declared with his pointing forefinger, so small in
contrast with the vast spaces he sought to index. “Him is a boat, ain’t him,
mamma?”
“Him is, indeed, a boat,” cried out Paula. “Never mind,” for little Ned’s
head was drooping, “we shall get a bigger boat presently. And it was you
that saw the first one!”
“Get him down from there, Paula,” said Floyd-Rosney, greatly
discomposed. “Set him at some other mischief, for God’s sake,—anything
but this.”
“He is coming now,” she answered, glimpsing the rueful little face
through the balusters of the stairs within, and, presently, the whole
diminutive figure came into view as he descended, always the right foot
first, and only one step at a time, so high were the intervals for his fat baby
legs.
“The poor child,” Paula suddenly exclaimed, the tears springing. “There
just seems to be no place for him.”
Floyd-Rosney obviously felt the rebuke. He winced for a moment. Then
he justified himself.
“To have twenty people on the qui vive for a boat and then disappoint
them with that silly prank,—it is out of the question.”
“It was no prank,—he meant no harm,” said Paula in abashed
discomfiture. “I had told him to watch for a boat merely to keep him out of
the way. I didn’t think to explain that it was to be a steamboat for us to
board.”
 “Then you ought to have more consideration for other people,” Floyd-
Rosney fumed.
His strong point was scarcely altruism, but he probably felt the
misadventure even more sensibly than any of the others, for he was
accustomed to lording it in a fine style and in a fine sphere. There was no
lack of indicia of displeasure among the thwarted travelers as they strolled
in baffled irritation up and down the stone floor of the portico, and gazed
along the glittering river at the slow approach of the shanty-boat, now
drifting as noiselessly and apparently as aimlessly on the lustrous surface as
a sere leaf on a gust of wind, and now, with its great sweeps, working to
keep the current from carrying it in and grounding it on the bank. The old
lady who had entertained fears of the insane man was both peevishly
outspoken and addicted to covert innuendo.
“I declare it has given me a turn,—I am subject to palpitation.” She put
her hand with a gingerly gesture to the decorous passamenterie on her chest
that outlined her embroidered lawn guimpe. “Shocks are very bad for any
cardiacal affection. Oh, of course,” a wan and wintry smile at once of
acceptance and protest as Paula expressed her vicarious contrition, “the
child didn’t intend any harm, but it only shows the truth of the old saw that
children should be seen and not heard.” She could not be placated, and she
sighed plaintively as she once more sat down on her suitcase on the steps of
the portico.
The men had less to say, but were of an aspect little less morose. Even
the broker, whose heart had warmed to the sunshine, felt it a hardship that
he should not have the boon at least of knowing how the deal had gone. A
grim laugh, here and there, betokened no merriment and was of sarcastic
intimations that touched the verge of rudeness. The business interests of
more than one were liable to suffer by prolonged absence, and the
ruefulness of disappointment showed in several countenances erstwhile
resolutely cheerful.
Paula, to escape further disaffected comment, had turned within,
perceiving, at a distance, Hildegarde coming down the hall, gazing intently
on a little forked stick, carried stiffly before her in both hands, the eyes of a
group hard by fixed smilingly upon her mysterious progress. Randal Ducie
suddenly entered from one of the rooms on the left, where he and his
brother had been examining the rescued papers.
 Was it because Paula was so accustomed to the vicarious preëminence
which her husband’s wealth and prominence had conferred upon her that
she should experience a sentiment of revolt upon discerning the surprise
and accession of interest in Randal Ducie’s face as his eyes passed from her
and fixed themselves on Hildegarde—or was it because she still arrogated
instinctively her quondam hold upon his heart? Had she never consciously
loosed it?—or, while he had escaped its coercions, were they still potential
with her? Why should she wince and redden as, with his hat in his hand, he
advanced instantly to meet Miss Dean, who seemed not to see him and to
cavalierly ignore his presence.
“Why, won’t you speak to me?” he demanded, smiling.
Her casual glance seemed to pass him over. She was intent upon the little
forked stick. “What do you want me to say to you?” she asked, not lifting
her radiant blue eyes, half glimpsed beneath her lowered black lashes.
“Good morning, at least,” replied Randal.
“How many greetings do you require? Upon my word, the man has
forgotten that he has seen me earlier to-day. I wished you a ‘good morning’
at that very delectable breakfast table.”
“Oh, that must have been my brother,” said Randal, enlightened. “This is
I, myself, Randal Ducie.”
“You had better beware how you try your fakes on me. You don’t know
what magic power I have in this little divining-rod. I will tell you presently
to go and look into your strong box and find all your jewels and gold turned
to pebbles, and your title-deeds cinders and blank paper.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Floyd-Rosney unpleasantly. “The blind goddess
will undertake that little transformation.” His imperious temper could
scarcely brook the perception that the coterie regarded the Ducies as
restored to the ownership of their ancient estates, even while he stood in the
hall of the house he held by the decree of the courts.
But Hildegarde did not hear or heed. Bent on her frivolous fun, she
brushed past Ducie, holding her divining-rod stiffly in her dainty fingers.
Her eyes were alight with laughter as she exclaimed in a voice agitated with
affected excitement, “Oh, it’s turning! It’s turning! I shall find silver in one
more moment. Oh, Major, Major,” she brought the twig up against the old
soldier’s breast. “Here it is—silver—in the Major’s waistcoat pocket!”
 She fell back against the great newel of the staircase, laughing
ecstatically, while all the idle group looked on with amused sympathy, save
only the two Floyd-Rosneys. The wife’s face was disconcerted, almost wry,
with the affected smile she sought to maintain, as she watched Ducie’s
glowing expression of admiration, and the husband’s gravity was of baleful
significance as he watched her.
“I have found silver! I have found silver! Now, Major, stand and
deliver.” As the trembling fingers of the veteran obediently explored the
pocket and produced several bits of money, they were hailed with
acclamations by the discoverer, till she suddenly espied a coin with a hole
in it. “Oh, Major,” she cried, in genuine enthusiasm. “Give me this dime!”
“Oh, Hildegarde,”—Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s face assumed an expression of
reprehension, but Mrs. Dean only laughed at the childish freak.
“I will have it,—it won’t make or break the Major—I want it—to wear
as a bangle, to remind me of this lovely trip, and all that the Major and I
have plotted, and contrived, and conspired together. Eh, Major? Oh,—
thanks,—thanks,—muchly. You may have the rest, Major.” And she tucked
the remaining coins back into his pocket, smiling brightly the while up into
his sightless eyes.
Randal Ducie, with an air of sudden decision, turned about, seized his
brother by the arm and together they stood before the joyous young beauty,
who was obviously beginning to canvass mentally the next possibility of
amusement under these unpropitious circumstances.
“Now, Miss Dean, be pleased to cast your eyes over us. I am not going
to allow this fellow to deprive me of your valuable acquaintance.”
“Oh, pick me out, Miss Dean,” cried Adrian plaintively. “I am all mixed
up. I don’t know if I am myself or my brother.”
Miss Dean stared from one to the other, her brilliant eyes wide with
wonder.
“How perfectly amazing!” she exclaimed. “Oh, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, how
did you distinguish and recognize one of them Thursday afternoon?”
Paula’s mind was so engrossed that, quick as she was always to discern
the fluctuations of favor in her husband’s disposition toward her, she had
not observed his peculiar notice of the fact of her retentive memory and
keen perception in distinguishing the veiled identity of the man who had
once been dear to her,—once?
 “Oh, I saw the difference instantly,” she declared, with what her husband
considered an undignified glibness, and an interest especially unbecoming
in a matter so personal, which should be barred to her by the circumstances.
“This is Randal, and this is Mr. Adrian Ducie.”
Indeed, they all noticed, with varying sentiments, the familiar use of the
Christian name, but only Adrian spoke in his debonair fashion.
“Right-o! I begin to breathe once more. I was afraid I was going to have
to be Randal.”
Miss Dean was still studying the aspect of the two brothers. “I believe
you are correct, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,” she said slowly. “For this one, Mr.
Adrian Ducie, is just from France, and he has on Paris-made shoes,—I
know the last. It is the dernier cri.”
There was a general laugh.
“Blessed Saint Crispin! I’ll make a votive offering!” cried Adrian. “Now,
Randal, you stay away from me,” with a vigorous push of his brother at
arm’s length, “so that this mix-up can’t happen again.”
“I’ll borrow his shoes when he is asleep and he will never know himself
any more!” said Randal vindictively.
There was a sudden cheerful acclaim from the portico without. A boat
had been sighted, slowly rounding the point, a packet of the line this time,
and all was bustle preparatory to embarkation. Even now the whistle, husky,
loud, widely blaring, filled the air, signaling the approaching landing, the
Captain having received information when passing the Cherokee Rose of
the plight of the refugees. The next moment they were sheepishly laughing,
for the steamer, the Nixie, was sending forth a second blast, a prolonged
whining shriek, the signal known on the river as a “begging whistle” by
which boats solicit patronage in passengers or freight, and which is usually
sounded only when there is a doubt whether a stoppage is desired.
Humoring the joke at their expense, the refugees made a vigorous reply,
waving handkerchiefs, raising hats on umbrellas and canes, hallooing
lustily, as they wended their way down the pavement, over the ruined
embankment of the old levee, along the grass-grown road and to the brink
of the bank, seeming high and precipitous at this stage of the river. They
were well in advance of the stoppage of the steamer, although, as she came
sweeping down the current, the constantly quickening beat of her paddles
on the water could be heard at a considerable distance in that acceleration of
speed always preliminary to landing. They watched all her motions with an
eagerness to be off as if some chance could yet snatch the opportunity from
their reach,—the approach, the backing, the turning, the renewed approach,
all responsive to the pilot-bells jangling keenly on the air. Then ensued the
gradual cessation of the pant of the engines, the almost imperceptible
gliding to actual stoppage, as the Nixie lay in the deep trough of the channel
of the river, the slow swinging of the staging from the pulleys suspended
above the lower deck. The end of the frame had no sooner been laid on the
verge of the high bank than the refugees were trooping eagerly down its
steep, cleated incline to the lower deck as if the steamer would touch but a
moment and then forge away again.
The Nixie was sheering off, thus little delayed, to resume her downward
journey and the passengers had begun to gather on the promenade deck
when Miss Dean encountered Adrian Ducie. She stopped short at the sight
of him. “Why, where is the other one of you?” she exclaimed.
“He remained at Duciehurst. I have pressing business in Vicksburg,—my
stoppage, as you know, was involuntary. I shall return later.”
“Oh, I don’t like to see you apart.”
“If you would take a little something now,” he said alluringly, “you
might see double. Then the freak brothers would be all right again.”
“But the parting must be very painful after such a long separation,” she
speculated.
“We shed a couple of tears,” and Adrian wagged his head in melancholy
wise.
“Oh, you turn everything into ridicule,—even your fraternal affection,”
she said reproachfully.
“Would you have me fall to weeping in sad earnest? Besides, the parting
is only for a day or so. I shall take the train at Vicksburg and rejoin him.”
“And where is Mrs. Floyd-Rosney?” she asked, looking about.
“She, too, remained at Duciehurst,” said one of the sour old ladies.
Adrian rose precipitately. The boat, headed downstream, was now in the
middle of the channel, and he gazed at the rippling, shimmering expanse as
if he had it in mind to attempt its transit. Here, at all events, was something
which he did not turn into ridicule. The great house beyond its ruinous levee
rose majestically into the noontide sunlight, all its disasters and indignities
effaced by the distance. The imposing, pillared portico, the massive main
building with its heavy cornice, the broad wings, the stone-coped terraces,
all were distinct and differentiated, amidst the glossy magnolias that,
sempervirent, aided its aspect of reviviscence, with a fain autumnal haze
softening its lines, and the brilliant corrugated surface of the river in the
foreground.
He stood gazing vainly upon it, as it seemed to recede into the distance,
till, presently, the boat rounded a point and it vanished like an unsubstantial
mirage, like a tenuous mist of the morning.
 CHAPTER XII
It was through no will of her own that Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had remained
at Duciehurst. She had been eager and instant in the preparations for
departure as soon as the approach of the boat was heralded. She had aided
the old nurse with convulsive haste by hustling the baby’s effects into his
suitcase, jamming his cap down on his head and shaking him into his coat
with little ceremony. She had seen from the broken windows of the deserted
music-room the Ducie brothers, the last of all the procession of travelers,
wending down toward the great white shell in the river slowly approaching,
throwing off the foam in wreaths on each side. The two men walked
shoulder to shoulder; now and again they paused to confer; then going on;
and there was something so affectionate in their look and attitude, almost
leaning on one another, so endearing in the way in which one would lay his
hand on the other’s arm that tears sprang to her eyes, and, for the moment,
she felt that nothing was worth having in the world but the enduring
affection of a simple heart, which asks naught but love in return.
The momentary weakness was gone as it had come. She could feel only
elation—to be going, to get out of the house of Randal Ducie, which she
had entered with reluctance, even when she had doubted his claim, and now
that it had been proved valid in fact, if not in law, she could scarcely wait to
be quit of it.
In the hall, as she flustered forth—as Floyd-Rosney would have
described her agitated movements—she was astonished to come upon her
husband, placidly pacing up and down, his deliberate cigar between his lips,
his hands clasped behind him.
“Why, dear,”—she used the connubial address from force of habit, for
her voice was crisp and keenly pitched—“aren’t you ready?”
“Seems not,” he said, looking at her enigmatically.
“But we shall be left!” she exclaimed.
“Exactly.” He took his cigar from his mouth and emitted a puff of
fragrant nicotian.
He was wont to consult his own whims, but hitherto her supine
acquiescence had been actuated less by a realization of helplessness than
endorsement of his right of mastery, his superior and prevailing will. She
thought of her submissiveness at the moment.
How she had loved money! His money, of which she had enjoyed such
share as he saw fit to dole forth. All the stiffness, the induration of long
custom was at war with her Impulse as she cried:
“But I want to go! What do you mean by staying here?”
“But I want to stay,” he said imperiously, “and that is what I mean, and
all I mean.”
This was hardly comprehensive. He could scarcely control the rage that
from the first of this ill-omened detention had possessed him upon the
discovery of her lingering interest in the face of her old lover—a simple
matter and explicable; without latent significance it would have been in the
mind of any other man. Had it involved no sequence of subsequent events
even he, perhaps, would have brought himself to let it pass unconsidered.
He could not expect her to forget the fashion of Randal Ducie’s features,
and the presence of the twin brother conjured up his face anew—his face
which she had subtly distinguished from its counterpart. That revolted his
pride. His wife must have no thought, no care, no memory, even, for aught
save him! But her protest as to his ownership of Duciehurst, her revolt
against owing any phase of her prosperity to the misfortunes of the Ducies,
argued latent sensitiveness, an unprobed wound that he had not suspected,
thoughts that he could not divine, memories that he did not share. Never, in
all his experience of her, had her individuality, or even a question of his
authority, been asserted save since that remembered face reappeared,
affecting their matrimonial accord—he, imperious to command, from his
plenitude of wealth and power, she eager to fawn and obey.
“You don’t consider me at all. You don’t consult my wishes.”
“I do better, my love. I consult our mutual interests.”
“You treat me like a child, an idiot! You let me know nothing of our
plans. Why should we not leave this battered old ruin with the rest of the
passengers? How and when are we to leave? If, for nothing but to make a
decent response to Aunt Dorothy’s questions, I ought to be told something. I
hardly know how to face her.”
“Well I am not posing for that old darkey’s benefit,” he said, satirically
smiling.
There was a pause full of expectancy.
 “This battered old ruin!” he exclaimed. “It will be the finest mansion in
Mississippi by the time I am through with it.”
He cast his imperative eyes in approval over the great spaces of its open
apartments. “And you, my dear, will be proud to be its chatelaine, and
dispense its hospitalities.”
“Never,” she cried impetuously—“an abasement of pride for me!”
He changed color for a moment, and then held his ground.
“The ante-bellum glories will be revived in a style that has not been
attempted in this country.”
“The ante-bellum glories—that were the Ducies’,” she said, with a
flushed face and a flashing eye.
He was of so imperious a personality that he seldom encountered rebuke
or contradiction. He was of such potential endowments that effort was
unknown and failure was annihilated in his undertakings. He scarcely
understood how he should deal with this unprecedented insolence, this
revolt on the part of the being who had seemed to him most devoted, most
adoring. The incense of worship had been dear to him,—and now the
worshiper had lapsed to revilings and sacrilege!
“Paula, you are a fool absolute,” he said roughly.
“Ah, no—not I—not I!” she cried significantly. She lifted her head with
a quick motion. The boat at the landing was getting up steam. She heard the
exhaust of the engines, then the sonorous beat of the paddles on the water,
and the swishing tumult of the waves as the wheels revolved.
“They are going,” she cried, “and we are left!”
She turned to him in agitation. He stood, splendid in his arrogant
assurance, in his unrelenting dominance, his fine presence befitting the
great hall which he would so amply grace in its restored magnificence. It
was well for him that he was so handsome. Such a man, less graciously
endowed, would have been intolerable in his arrogance, his selfishness, his
brutality.
He showed no interest in the departure at the landing; he knew, by the
sound, that the steamboat was now well out in midstream, and he secretly
congratulated himself upon the termination of this ill-starred revival of old
associations with the Ducies. Never again should they cross his wife’s path.
Never again should he submit to the humiliation imposed upon him by the
revival of old memories which had incited in her this strange restiveness to
his supreme control. She had been wont to hug her chains—not that he thus
phrased the gentle constraints he had imposed, rather wifely duty, conjugal
love, admiration, trust.
The steamboat was gone at length, and his wife, standing in the hall and
looking through the wide doorless portal, had seen the last of the
passengers. Looking with a strange expression on her strained face which
he could not understand,—what series of mysteries had her demeanor set
him to interpret during these few hours, she who used to be so pellucidly
transparent! Looking with frowning brow and questioning intent eyes, then
with a suddenly clearing expression and a vindictive glance like triumph,
she turned away with an air of bridling dignity, as if the steamer and its
passengers had no concern for her, and, the next moment, Randal Ducie
ascended the steps and entered the hall.
 CHAPTER XIII
Edward Floyd-Rosney in some sort habitually confused cause and
effect. In his normal entourage he mistook the swift potencies of his wealth,
waiting on his will, like a conjurer’s magic, for an individual endowment of
ability. He had great faith in his management. In every group of business
men with whom his affairs brought him in contact his financial weight gave
him a predominance and an influence which flattered his vanity, and which
he interpreted as personal tribute, and yet he did not disassociate in his
mind his identity from his income. His wealth was an integral part of him,
one of the many great values attached to his personality—he felt that he was
wise and witty, capable and coercive. He addressed himself to the
manipulation of a difficult situation with a certainty of success that gave a
momentum to the force with which his money carried all before him. So
rarely had he been placed on a level with other men, in a position in which
wealth and influence were inoperative, that he had had scant opportunities
to appraise his own mental processes—his judgment, his initiative, his
powers of ratiocination.
He did not feel like a fool when Randal Ducie walked deliberately into
the hall of his fathers, staring in responsive surprise to see the Floyd-
Rosneys still lingering there. That admission was impossible to Floyd-
Rosney’s temperament. He felt as if contemplating some revulsion of
nature. He had seen this man among the crowd, boarding the steamer, and
lo, here he was again, on dry land and the boat now miles distant.
He stood stultified, all his plans for the avoidance of Ducie strangely
dislocated and set at naught by the unexpected falling out of events.
He was not calculated to bear tamely any crossing of his will, and the
blood began to throb heavily in his temples with the realization that his wife
had understood his clumsy maneuver, of which she was the subject, and
witnessed its ludicrous discomfiture. His pride would not suffer him to
glance toward her, where she sat perched up on the grand staircase, in the
attitude of a coquettish girl. He curtly addressed Ducie:
“Thought you were gone!”
“No,” said Ducie, almost interrogatively, as to why this conclusion.
 Floyd-Rosney responded to the intonation.
“I saw you going down to the landing.”
“To see my brother off.”
“Oh,—ah——”
What more obvious—what more natural? The one resumed his
interrupted journey, and the other was to take up his usual course of life.
That is, thought Floyd-Rosney, if this one is Randal Ducie. But, for some
reason, they might have reversed the program, and this is the other one.
Floyd-Rosney struggled almost visibly for his wonted dominance, but
Ducie had naught at stake on his favor, naught to give or to lose, and his
manner was singularly composed and inexpressive—too well bred to even
permit the fear of counter questions as to why they lingered here and let the
steamer leave without them. Perhaps, he felt such inquiries intrusive, for,
after a moment, he turned away, and Floyd-Rosney still confronted him
with eyes round and astonished and his face a flushed and uneasy mask of
discomfiture.
Momentarily at a loss how to dispose of himself, Ducie looked about the
apartment, devoid of chairs or any furniture, and, finally, resorted to the
staircase, taking up a position on one of the lower steps. Perhaps, had he
known that the Floyd-Rosneys were within he would have lingered outside.
But dignity forbade a retreat, although his disinclination for their society
was commensurate with Floyd-Rosney’s aversion to him and his brother.
For his life Floyd-Rosney, still staring, could not decide which of the twain
he had here, and Paula, with a perverse relish of his quandary, perceived
and enjoyed his dilemma. Although he was aware she could discern the
difference her manner afforded him no clew, as she sat silent and
intentionally looking very pretty, to her husband’s indignation, as he noted
the grace of her studied attitude, her face held to inexpressive serenity, little
in accord with the tumult of vexation the detention had occasioned her.
Floyd-Rosney could not restrain his questions. Perhaps they might pass
with Ducie as idle curiosity, although with Paula he had now no disguise.
“You are waiting——?”
“For my horse,” returned Ducie, with the accent of surprise. “There was
no room in the phaeton for me, as Colonel Kenwynton and Major Lacey
concluded to accompany the doctor and his patient to the sanatorium.”
 So this was Randal Ducie, and the brother had resumed his journey
down the river.
“The doctor promised to send the horse back for me——” he paused a
moment. “I hope he will send the phaeton, too, for if you have made no
other arrangements——” Once more he paused blankly—it seemed so
strange that Floyd-Rosney should allow himself to be marooned here in this
wise. “If you have made no other arrangements it will give me pleasure to
drive you to the station near Glenrose.”
“We are due at the sanatorium for the insane, I think,” cried Paula, with
her little fleering laugh, her chin thrust up in her satirical wont.
Floyd-Rosney, sore bestead and amazed by her manner, made a
desperate effort to recover his composure.
“Oh, I sent a telegram by one of the passengers to be transmitted when
the boat touches at the landing at Volney, and this will bring an automobile
here for my family.”
“If the passenger does not forget to send it, or if, when the boat touches
he is not asleep, after his vigils here, or if he is not taking a walk, or eating
his lunch, or, like Baal of old, otherwise engaged, when we, too, may cry
Baal, Baal, unavailingly. For my part, I accept your offer, Mr. Ducie, if your
vehicle comes first; if not I hope you will take a seat in the automobile with
us.”
“That is a compact,” said Ducie graciously.
Floyd-Rosney felt assured that this was Randal. He was more suave than
his brother—or was it that old associations still had power to gentle his
temper? He could not understand his wife’s revolt. Now and again he
looked at her with an unconscious inquiry in his eyes. So little was he
accustomed to subject his own actions to criticism that it did not occur to
him that he had gone too far. The worm had turned, seeming unaware how
lowly and helpless was its estate. He had all the sentiment of grinding it
under his heel, as he said loftily:
“We shall have no need to impose upon you, Mr. Ducie. Our own
conveyance will be here in ample time,”—then, like a jaw-breaker
—“Thanks.”
“I march with the first detachment,” declared Paula hardily. “I shall
accept your offer of transportation, Mr. Ducie, if the auto does not come
first.”
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