Chapter VIII: Part II: I (1)

A year had gone by since Trescot’s death. St. Ann was prospering and on the way to become a great city. The shops were larger, the cotton-presses more busy, a new railroad was approaching the town. Already the divided water-front at the bend was being needed for cotton-storage and to supply landings for freight-boats.

Greyhurst profited by the general rise in real estate, and was able to sell two or three lots at good prices. His political prospects were also promising, and with increased means and lessening causes of irritability, he began to feel some return of self-confidence and the amiability of a man reassured as to his future. A fortunate decision in a case against the United States government added local popularity, and it may be said that, except in the opinion of a small class, he had suffered little in the eyes of a community largely made up of not altogether the best elements of the West and South. As he became busier, chiefly with small suits, occupation served to assist the blurring influence of time.

And yet he had his hours, or at least his minutes, of regret. He was sensitive, as the irritable often are, not merely to slights, but also to memorial reminders. He never willingly walked over the ground where he had seen Trescot fall. He had that day put a rose in his buttonhole. He never did so again. He still excused his act as justified by what Trescot had said, and by the self-belief encouraged in his trial by those who swore they thought Trescot was about to draw and defend himself. He was measurably successful, but never could deal as readily with his remembrance of the agonized face of Constance Trescot. That she had gone, never to be seen by him again, was a vast relief.

There is, however, a little space of time when the specters of thought or memory possess the scene. In the brief interval between the waking state and sleep, when the will is becoming dormant, and imagination plays us sad tricks, he saw her as she stood before him pronouncing the sentence which he never could forget. Of late this visualized memory was becoming less vivid. He felt that also to be a relief.

On the ninth of October, the anniversary of Trescot’s death, Greyhurst walked up the hill slope from his own house, and past the long-closed home of the man he had killed. He had a startling revival of memory as he saw that the windows were open, but he reflected with satisfaction that it had some new owner. Very naturally he had never spoken of it or its former tenant, and knew nothing in regard to it. He went on, setting his mind upon the business of the day, nor did he venture to ask any one who had taken the house.

At dusk the day before Constance Trescot and a maid arrived at St. Ann. Unrecognized in her black veil, she had driven to her old home. A letter from her and a despairing note from Susan Hood had prepared the Averills for her coming, so that she found the house in order and her old servants ready.

For two days she was, by her own wish, alone, having begged her sister, who utterly disapproved of her return to St. Ann, not to join her for a fortnight.

She found the house, as she had desired to find it, unaltered. She went up-stairs and changed her dress, asking to have tea sent up to her. Later in the evening, when the house had been closed, and the servants had gone to bed, she took a candle and went down to the study. The room, by her wish, had never been opened, and the dust lay thick on everything. For a minute she stood with the candlestick in her hand and looked about her. There were the table and books—the Bible with one of her own gloves left in it as a marker at the story of Ruth, which Trescot had meant next to read to her. The dead rose-stem was in the tall glass, the dried petals on the table. The piano was there, and her music; on a chair lay Trescot’s spurs and his riding-whip. She sat down, and for the first time in months broke into a passion of tears. That yearning for the dead which few escape came upon her. She threw up her hands with a wild gesture of utter despair. “How am I to bear it?” she cried. “How am I to bear it?”

At last she lay down on the lounge, and, wiping her eyes, resolutely controlled herself. Once repossessed of power to think, she lay quiet, reflecting. All summer, at times, she had set herself to plan some scheme of punishment for the man who had wrecked her life. She had schemed in vain. She was a woman, and powerless. What could she do?

The air was warm, the room close. She opened a door and went out and stood in the garden. The damp night air brought to her the fragrance of lingering autumn roses, with the keen memories perfumes so surely recall, and the darkness intensified her abiding sense of loneliness.

She sat down on the steps of the porch, and fed her grief with remembered joy. An immense longing came over her to see her dead as he was in life, and it seemed to her as though she must have some power to compel this vision. She had greatly desired to dream of him, and had never done so. At times, as now, she failed to be able to call his face into mental view. The longing seemed to affect her whole strong young body, so that she felt her heart beat in her neck and down to her finger-ends.

Suddenly she swayed to one side. She sat up, alarmed. A slight, abrupt sense of weakness, of want of control over her muscles, announced that to indulge in the remembrance of hours of passionate love, or of joyous comradeship, was perilous to such absolute self-command as she well knew she should need. She recalled the old doctor’s warning. He had said that to give way to emotion would for a long time to come be likely to bring about a fresh attack of loss of self-command. She set herself sternly to recover calmness of mind, and with it the power to reason. As she rose she felt amazed at this sudden feebleness. Resolving not again to give way to the sweetness and pain of trying to live back into the too real recollection of the days of a supreme passion, she went in, and, to her surprise, slept a deep and, as she knew next morning, an unrefreshing slumber. “This shall not happen again,” she said, as she turned over her letters at breakfast; and, in fact, unsatisfied desire to make her husband’s murderer atone in suffering took the place of a more perilous form of mental activity.

After breakfast she quietly arranged her household affairs for the day, and then busied herself in setting the study in order, dusting it, with care to leave all things as they had been.

At last she sat down at Trescot’s table, and, preoccupied, dipped a pen into the dry inkstand. She laid down the pen and went to get her traveling-inkstand. Returning, she stood still a moment, and then turned to her own table, and again sat down. She had the feeling that not where he sat could she plan a course of life so opposed to all he held dear. He would have said, “Forgive; forget.” For a minute, and for the first time, the woman hesitated. She was at the parting of the ways. She looked around her at the memorials of a true and noble life, and forward at the lonely desert of days and years without hope and void of all the joys that belong to youth and love. She did not reason—she simply felt. “No,” she said aloud; “I must go my way.” From that sad hour she held to one unchanging resolve.

First she must see Coffin, and must know all that was possible of her enemy’s life. How could she, a young woman, enter into it with power to ruin and make him suffer? She resolved to be patient. Had it been some lesser injury, she could have made the man love her and then cast him aside to realize the pain of loss. She knew, as by instinct, her power over men. She dismissed the thought in disgust and horror, and, rising, walked about, and at last went into the front parlor, and, to air the long-closed room, threw up a sash. As she moved to the other window she saw herself in a mirror, a tall form in deep mourning-dress, with a face the whiter from contrast with her black gown and mass of dark hair. She threw up the sash and stood still, held motionless as if by some fascination; for, on the farther side of the street, in the brilliant sunshine, she saw John Greyhurst walking slowly toward the town. He glanced over at the house and saw and knew her. Instantly quickening his pace, he looked away and moved on.

Noting the suddenly averted head, the abrupt hastening of his steps, she looked after him, and said aloud: “He feels; he is sensitive.” A stern joy possessed her, and she turned away satisfied. “Now I know,” she said.

When she went back to the study she saw Tom Coffin on the back porch. She called him: “Tom, Tom!”

“I heard you was here. I was that sure you would come back. Are you going to stay, ma’am?”

“Yes; I do not know how long. I told you I meant to come. Did you keep my secret?”

“I did.”

“Are you doing well on the bluff?”

“Why, Mrs. Trescot, I’m saving money. Never did that before in all my life, and it’s all along of you. Oh, we’re right well pleased, all of us.”

It was a long speech for Tom.

“I am very glad. And now I want something. I want to know all about that man, Tom. How he spends his time. He goes to his office, I suppose, and to that club, and to—to the court-house. Does he go to any houses? Does he visit any one—any woman?”

“You want me to find out? That’s easy enough.”

“But he must not know he is watched.”

Tom smiled. “All right.” He looked at her and wondered what she could mean to do. It seemed simple to him—a rifle-shot, and that would end the matter. She had said no. Her desire for some continuity of punishment would have been foreign to his mountain code of vengeance. For men of his kind there was some recognized joy in the crude pleasure of pipe and glass, of the visible results of the hunt, and of the use of ax and plow. The men he knew had no other joys, and to take life was to take away all that was valuable, and competently to deal with a wrong. He left her, puzzled as to what she meant to do, but, as always, her willing instrument, in small things or in large.

On the following day the general found her in the parlor.

“Well, my dear,” he said, “we are glad and sorry to see you here again. You are still too pale. Are you well?”

“Yes; I think I may say that I am as strong as I ever was. Sit down; I want to talk to you.”

“Certainly, my dear child. There is a good deal of business. The water-front at the bend ought to be improved, and—”

“Excuse me, general, but those matters may wait. I have other things to speak of, and, to me, far more important things.”

He was surprised and curious. “Now, as always, I am at your disposal.”

“I asked you some time ago to do for me what I was sure you would disapprove of.”

“Yes, on the whole I did disapprove; and when the warden said he would never consent I felt relieved. Mrs. Averill and I considered it unwise, and only to be explained by the condition in which your illness left you. It would have been an impropriety, to say no more.”

“I do not feel as you do,” she returned. “A useful, noble life is ended by a brute’s anger. He lives on unpunished. A jury justifies his act; no one remembers. Is there to be no record? Must this man live and go his way just as before? As I live, I do not mean that he shall. If to kill him would satisfy me, and I had been a man, I would have shot him as I should any other wild beast, and not have had a pang of remorse. But something I must do—oh, something!”

She rose and walked up and down the room, the figure of an avenging fate, splendid in her wrath.

“My dear Constance! let me beg of you—”

“Pardon me, let me finish. I mean to make this man suffer—oh, as I have suffered; oh, more, if that be possible! I have now but one purpose in life, and to it I mean to give my strength, my thought, and, at need, every dollar I have in the world.”

He lifted a hand in appeal: “God knows, dear, that I feel for you; but what can you do?”

He felt in a larger way much as Coffin felt; but this woman’s talk of some more refined vengeance struck him as pitiable in its incapacities.

“What I can do, general, I do not know as yet. I have felt, however, that I wished you beforehand to understand that if I seem strange in what I do, or, as men see things, eccentric, you will not consider me insane. I am fully aware that you will disapprove. I cannot help that. A man dies, and a woman must sit down and cry. I am not so made; I cannot, and I would not if I could.”

This stormy passion troubled him. It was not like any woman he had ever known. There was something in it of the deadly instinct of attack of a wounded animal—something not modern. Revenge had been in his experience the prerogative of man. He did not know how to answer her, and fell upon petty futilities. People would talk—she would surely be thought to be crazy. He hesitated to say that this vain dream of a woman ruining a strong man outside of the possibility of contact or influence was absurd, and might come to seem ridiculous, even with the tragedy behind it.

He moved her no whit. As he talked she continued to walk about uneasily, and at last pausing before him, said: “I know how you, how any man, must feel about what I have said. If there are men fools enough to think lightly of it, I swear to you there will be one man who will not laugh when I am done with him.”

The general began to think that it might very well be. He said: “I should be a poor friend, Constance, if I did not try to stop you. Think it over. Let Mrs. Averill talk to you, and wait, my dear. Do nothing rash.”

“Certainly, general, I shall do as you say. I am in no hurry, but nothing on earth will move me.”

“I am very, very sorry.”

“I could hardly have imagined that you would agree with me. May I ask you if that man is prosperous, if people have condoned his act?”

He hesitated. It was unnatural, disagreeable, this curiosity about a man who ought to have passed unmentioned out of her life.

“You do not want to answer me.”

“Frankly, I do not. He and I do not speak. If ever he did, I should call him out and kill him.”

“Thank you. I shall not urge you further. I can easily learn all I need to learn. Ask my dear Mrs. Averill to come here at four to-day. I have the miniatures for her. I have made myself unpleasant. You will forgive me, I am sure.”

He took her hand as he rose, kissed it in the old-fashioned way, and left her, feeling that he had entirely failed to bring her to reason.

When he related to Mrs. Averill this amazing interview, she said: “It is very sad, but it is also absurd. I will make her understand that, as a woman, I feel with and for her. It will then be easy to make clear how utterly impossible it is for her to do anything. It is really childish.”

The general smiled. “Wait a little,” he said—“wait until you hear her talk.”

When Mrs. Averill had kissed the pale cheek and expressed pleasure at seeing her again, Constance gave her the two miniatures. They were admirably done, and the mother’s eyes filled as she looked up and thanked the kind thought which had made them hers.

“And now, dear,” she said, “the general has told me of your talk. I am a woman and can enter into your feelings; but, dear, I am a Christian, and must plead with you, by all that George Trescot held dear and true, to put aside these thoughts of revenge. They are wicked; and even if they were not, it is practically useless for you or me, or any woman, to think of affecting the life of such a man.”

“But I am not a Christian, Mrs. Averill.”

“No; Susan told me that long ago, to my regret, dear. But still you must at least feel—”

“Pardon me, my dear Mrs. Averill,” she broke in. “I must go my way, and I mean to do so. I may fail; I think I shall not fail. But let me say, dear friend, once for all, just this,” and she laid a hand on the knee of the elder woman. “I am here for a purpose, but I shall live my life—the usual life. I shall see you often, I hope; and while here I shall try to do what good I can to those who are in need or suffering. All pain and all human distress appeal to me as they never did before. We will never recur to this subject, and yet, last of all, let me say just only this: if a man killed me, do you think George Trescot, no matter what his creed, would have left him unpunished?”

“But that is different,” said the old lady, feebly.

“I do not so see it,” said Constance. “We won’t talk about it any more. Here are some new flower-seeds and a meerschaum pipe for our dear general.”

Mrs. Averill thanked her, and they spoke of other matters—Susan, dress, foreign travel, and, at last, of the home for the orphans of Confederate soldiers. She—Constance—desired to help it.

After a long chat, the pretty old lady put on her gloves and rose, quite conscious that she had fared no better than her husband. She had been accustomed to act in her quiet, sweet-tempered way as a peace-making influence. Her gray, wrinkled, patient face preached silent sermons of gentleness and endurance. She had lost children, fortune, and all that helps us to bear the inevitable addition of such physical disabilities as the years bring to the old. She still retained a certain pleasure in her power to affect for good the lives of the younger people, whom, now that the general was once more prosperous, she liked to see about her—the young and the happy. What she had heard from Constance was both a novel revelation and a shock to her womanly sense of what was proper and reasonable. With larger knowledge and increased opportunities she might be able to turn this young friend aside from a course which seemed to her both wrong and foolish. She, too, had suffered, and had won at last the sad serenity of a sorrow for which this earth has no competent relief, and which looks for answer to another world than ours. She had nothing in her own nature or experience to explain either the strength or the defects of a woman like Constance Trescot. That she should want to avenge an injury, and yet earnestly desire to help the poor and the suffering, seemed to Eleanor Averill an incredible attitude of mind. As she walked homeward she consoled herself with the belief that perhaps, after all, Constance would soon come to realize her own incapacity and abandon her purpose. She had learned, as the old learn, to have great faith in time.

II

Greyhurst, who had reflected not a little on the return of Mrs. Trescot, concluded that her large business interests alone could have brought her to St. Ann. She was unlikely to remain; and even if her stay should be long, what did it matter? On the third day after her return he went to his office and began to read his letters. One in a firm, large-charactered woman’s hand interested him. He broke the black seal of the mourning-paper. A yellow slip fell out. He read:

“SIR:

“The inclosed telegram was in the hand of the man you murdered at the
moment he was going toward you to offer, as before he had no power to
do, a friendly, and even generous, division of the lands at the bend.
His blood is on it, as I trust it may rest on your own soul.

“CONSTANCE TRESCOT.”

His first feeling was simply astonishment. For a moment he held the letter in act to tear it up. Then, as if that were impossible, he laid it down and mechanically unfolded the telegram and read it over and over. It was terribly new to him. The general had never spoken to him since the day of his fatal anger. He knew, of course, of the more recent and accepted proffer to Mrs. Baptiste to divide the frontage. He sat stupefied. He saw the brown blood-stains on the paper, and let it fall. The scene came back to him. Yes, the man _was_ smiling—he had thought it the smile of triumph. There he was, dead—dead! He tore the papers to pieces and cast them into the waste-basket at his side. A brief fury of anger came over him. He rose and walked to and fro. “By heavens, if she were a man!” Then he controlled himself, saying: “After all, what does it matter—a woman’s revenge!”

I have said that he was variously sensitive. By degrees he had set aside and carefully rid himself of even the smallest reminder of an hour which he deeply regretted. He had ceased to wear his revolver; had put it aside and locked it up. He had found that the gray suit he wore during the trial revived a dark memory. He gave it away. And now, the feeble ingenuity of a woman’s hatred had brought back in dreadful clearness all that time had mercifully dealt with.

He went out and forced himself to attend to the business of the day. He stayed late at the club, seeking society, unwilling to face the solitude of his own house.

As he walked homeward in the darkness he took refuge in that which had somewhat helped him at an earlier period. During his trial men swore to their belief that the younger man was in act to draw his pistol. This, as he thought of it in cold blood, justified his own action as defensive. He clung to this view of the matter; set it before his mind as true, and, with sophistry which was scarcely self-convincing, so manipulated the facts that at last mere repetition of the mental states did assist him to escape from the self-reproach which fell upon him when Averill had struck him with the verdict of a man whom all men honored. The telegram and Mrs. Trescot’s letter had forced him again to think it all over. He realized how small had been his victory over the recording power of memory. He had been at the mercy of a slip of paper—and, at once, that which chanced a year ago was to him as if it had happened yesterday. At times he felt competent to defend and excuse his action; at others he suffered the anguish of such regret as was inevitable in an imaginative man, who felt keenly the accusation of having taken advantage of a man who carried no arms and was, to some extent, incapable of protecting himself.

By degrees, as the days went by, he comforted himself with the idea that here at least was the end. He had, too, at times an indistinct feeling that there was cruelty in thus tormenting a man who had bitterly repented; and the memory of the beauty and grace of the woman, and his immense admiration of her, barbed and poisoned the shaft which had gone so surely to its mark.

Meanwhile, Constance took up her life, but with more or less thought of its supreme purpose. She heard from Coffin what were the habits of Greyhurst’s days, and began to plan ways of knowing more of his life. At first all thought of him disturbed her emotionally; but this she learned to put aside. She was frequently at the general’s, but would go nowhere else. He had found for her riding-horses, and an old slave for a groom, so that soon her figure in the black riding-habit became familiar in and near the town. In a word, she lived, or seemed to live, the ordinary life of a young widow of more than usual means.

No one she knew mentioned Greyhurst, and, except the Averills and Coffin, no one suspected that she was doing or thinking otherwise than the two or three sad women in St. Ann who, like herself, were suffering from the cruel consequences of some deadly quarrel.

Toward the close of her second week at St. Ann, Mrs. Averill asked her to be present at a meeting of women who were interested in their modest home for the orphans of Confederate soldiers, to which Constance had promised help from Susan and herself. Contact with the Averills, and the misery she had seen as the direct or indirect result of war, had lessened her own strong partisan feeling. Disposed by nature to be generous, she was, moreover, eager to make friends and secure allies; and thus, although rather reluctant to face the many she would meet, she decided at last to accept Mrs. Averill’s invitation. It was late in the afternoon when she found herself among some two dozen ladies, old and young. Many of them she had met, and all were either anxious to express their sympathy by a kindly greeting, or were merely curious to see the rich widow who had so strangely elected to return to St. Ann.

Mrs. Averill explained that the meeting was informal and designed to assist the male managers of the home. She spoke, for Constance’s information, of the good it had done, and of the great difficulty they had in carrying it on. A lady read the quarterly statement of the treasurer, and the smallness of the deficit gave Constance a sad sense of their limited resources. Several women offered modest aid, and then there was the usual silence.

Constance whispered to Mrs. Averill, who said:

“Certainly, my dear. Ask what questions you please.”

Constance rose. “Mrs. Averill permits me to ask for some little information. May I inquire how many children you have in your home?”

From this she went on in a businesslike way to put herself in possession of all the facts she required to know.

“I have had,” she said, “some acquaintance with an institution like yours, and now may I learn finally how much per head per day it costs you?”

No one was quite prepared to answer; but Miss Bland, a spinster she had met before, said: “We can say that if we had a thousand dollars a year, with our present subscriptions, it would be enough to support all our home has room for.”

Constance then said: “My sister and I shall be most glad to give, between us, that amount for five years; and probably we may be able then to secure the same sum to you as a permanent income.”

There were exclamations of pleasure and surprise, and warm and grateful words as they turned to thank her. At last, on the suggestion of further business, Mrs. March, a stout, elderly dame, and their chairman, said: “We shall ask the gentlemen, our managers, to offer you formal thanks, Mrs. Trescot, for your generous help. As Southern ladies we thank you, and may I venture to add that every one in St. Ann appreciates the kind and liberal way in which you and Miss Hood have dealt with the squatters and, indeed, with all those with whom you have had to deal.”

Mrs. March drew back her chair and, smoothing out her gown, sat down, well pleased with her little speech.

“Thank you, Mrs. March,” said Constance. “It is quite unnecessary to thank us formally. I have here a blank check; I will fill it out for the first six months. And your little deficit I shall like to make good as my personal gift.”

Miss Bland, who sat on her right, said: “Oh, thank you; and don’t you want to see our printed report?”

Mrs. Averill shook her head; but the signal came too late. Constance said: “Yes, certainly, Miss Bland; I am much interested.” She glanced at the first page and saw that the managers were all ex-officers of the Confederacy, and that the seventh name was John Greyhurst’s. A faint flush rose to cheek and forehead. “Thank you,” she said as, with an effort to seem calm, she returned the pamphlet. “I do not want it.”

“Oh, keep it,” said Miss Bland; “I have another copy.”

“I said, ‘I do not want it,’” returned Constance, with emphasis.

Mrs. Averill frowned, and Mrs. Dudley, seated behind Miss Bland, whispered to her, with vicious satisfaction: “Take care, Eliza! How could you?”

“I do not see what I have done.”

As Mrs. Trescot rejected the pamphlet she sat up, quite too visibly disturbed to escape the notice of those who were within view of her face. With the persistency of the dull-witted, Miss Bland, annoyed at Mrs. Dudley’s reproof, exclaimed: “Oh, do take it!”

Constance turned toward her, saying so as to be generally heard: “I know, Miss Bland, that it could not have occurred to you that among the names of the managers is that of—” and she stopped, controlling herself.

Mrs. Dudley, leaning over the back of Miss Bland’s chair, whispered, “It is Greyhurst! How could you!”

“Oh, I never thought!” cried Miss Bland, awkwardly apologetic. “I am sorry. I didn’t remember.”

“I was sure of that. Do not let it trouble you.” Constance’s voice broke, and then, recovering, she added, “You have really done me a service.”

“You may be sure, Mrs. Trescot,” said Mrs. Dudley, “that we never thought—we—”

“Excuse me if I interrupt you,” returned Mrs. Trescot. “After what I have just learned, I must ask you to consider our gift as entirely in the hands of the visiting ladies, and not at the disposal of the male managers.”

Mrs. Averill said at once: “It shall be as you wish, dear. The gentlemen have been so inactive that it did not occur to any of us to think of them. The man referred to was put on the board three years ago, when it was first formed. It should have occurred to us; I ought to have told you.”

There was a moment of silence, when Mrs. March said: “You may rest assured, Mrs. Trescot, that no one here fails to feel with you; and if, under the circumstances, you would rather not give at all, we should all understand it.”

“Thank you,” said Constance, proudly; “you are most considerate. But you are welcome to all we can do, and if you find the situation embarrassing, as may be the case, I will write to Colonel Dudley and explain it myself. I see that he is chairman of the board.”

“Oh, no, no,” said several women. “By no means; it is quite unnecessary.”

Constance smiled in her cold way, shaking her head as she spoke, and rising.

“I must go. It is—it was a little too much for me. And you are all so good. I must go. Good-by.”

Mrs. Averill went with her to the outer door. “Oh, my dear, I am so sorry—and in my house, too; I am so very sorry!”

“I am not very sure that I am,” said Constance, as she kissed her and went away.

Mrs. Averill looked after her in puzzled amazement, and then returned to the room where her friends were busily discussing this unpleasant incident.

“It is just as well; she had to know soon or late,” said Mrs. March. “Of course he will hear of it—and I, for one, hope that he will hear of it.”

Others were of her way of thinking, and in a dozen homes that evening the sad story was revived and Constance’s generosity praised, and her sad fate pitied anew.

That evening she wrote to Mrs. March, inclosing a copy of a note sent to Colonel Dudley. She could not leave the ladies in a situation which obliged them to make to the managers an explanation which should properly come from her.

To the president of the board of the home she wrote:

“DEAR COLONEL DUDLEY:

“My sister and I are much interested in your excellent charity, and
we shall have the pleasure of aiding it to the extent of one thousand
dollars a year for five years. Then, or sooner, we hope to endow it
with enough to represent the same income. An accident brought to my
knowledge the fact that one of your members is the man who murdered
my husband. You will, I am sure, understand why I have felt it to be
impossible for me to confide our gladly given help to a board of
which he is a member. I have placed the money, and shall in future
place it, in the hands of the visiting committee of ladies, for their
use, and theirs alone. My own strong feeling, and my late husband’s
great regard for you, will, I know, excuse to you my very frank
statement.”

A courteous note acknowledging the receipt of her letter was all she heard of it for a week or more.

Susan Hood had twice put off her journey to St. Ann, having no reason to leave the home she loved except her affection for Constance. She had reluctantly come to the conclusion that marriage and trouble had in some way set up barriers between them. She had been the one strong, and even jealous, affection of Constance’s younger life, and now sadly felt that it had incomprehensibly lessened, and that her sister seemed to have been incapable of more than one such relation at a time.

After Trescot’s death Constance had begun again to rely on her, and to defer to her opinion on the lesser matters of life. But all through the summer and their many months of travel she had felt that the mind once so open to her was hiding and cherishing thoughts which she, Susan, was not allowed to share. All her kindly attempts to enter into the confidence of her sister failed, and now, being about to join her, she wrote, in some anxiety and distress:

“MY DEAR CONNY:

“Why you so obstinately insisted upon returning to a place which must
be full of painful memories I have never yet learned. Even for me it
must ever be hateful. But you are all I have in life; whither you go
I shall go. It is my duty, and I shall make it my pleasure. That is
all—except, dear, that I am sure you are bent on something which you
have, so far, concealed, and which I hope to understand. I have
respected your reticence, assured that it must have a reasonable
basis; but we once lived a frank and undivided life, and your
attitude to me all summer has made me most unhappy. Let us be, dear,
as we once were.

“Try to get a good horse for me. Love to the Averills. I shall arrive
on November 2, D. V.

“Yours always, SUSAN.

“October 25, 1871.”

It was near to the close of the month when Constance received this letter, and she knew at once that further concealment would be impossible. She was equally well aware that Susan would be shocked and grieved at a course of conduct so opposed to the beliefs which governed her own actions. Constance was sorry, but it did not affect her resolve.

She was always at home to the increasing number of women, young and old, who called upon her. Although her piano remained closed, she made her house interesting to people who had few chances of intellectual enjoyment, lending books and magazines, and when alone busying herself with hanging prints and water-colors brought from abroad. In the afternoons she rode in all weathers.

So far she had won her way, as she had meant to do, making her rather excessive bounty to the poor and sick the more gracious by the attraction of manner which made those whom she tactfully obliged partners of the honest joy she felt, especially in helping the sad and hopelessly stranded women of her own class.

Her desire to know more of her enemy than Coffin could tell her found at last an ally. Just before Susan’s arrival, she had come from a long ride, and met at her door a woman whose face and worn look had interested her for a moment at the meeting in Mrs. Averill’s home. Seeing her in her riding-dress, the woman would have gone away, but Constance said: “No, I am quite at leisure. Do come in. You are, I think, the matron of the home. I saw you at the meeting.”

“Yes; I am Miss Althea Le Moine.”

She was dressed in clothes which had evidently been long in use. Her air of furtive apprehension struck Constance. “A provincial lady,” was the hostess’s conclusion, as they sat down. Constance rang, saying: “I have the habit of indulging myself with a cup of tea after I ride. May I tempt you?”

The tea was brought, and the toast and cake evidently enjoyed, while they talked of the home and its needs, or Constance turned over her Florentine photographs, setting at ease a woman whom she felt to be somewhat embarrassed.

At last Miss Althea said: “I have come to you, Mrs. Trescot, to ask a little help.”

“Now that is very kind of you,” said her hostess. “Let us talk. What is it?”

It seemed that she owned a small house left to her by a brother who had fallen at Lookout Mountain. “He was a Confederate soldier,” she added. A mortgage upon it was one of the smaller debts due to Mr. Hood. Perhaps Mrs. Trescot would kindly wait. The interest was in arrears—the rent was ill paid; but she hoped—

Constance interrupted her. “I shall have pleasure in speaking of it to General Averill. I think that it has already been considered—and, by the way, how much is it?”

“Five hundred dollars; and really the house is all I have.”

“Make your mind easy; when my sister arrives we will do something to relieve you, and will certainly cancel the back interest. Now don’t cry. You have given me a pleasure, and if you cry I shall cry, and I hate to cry. Let us talk of something else.”

“How can I thank you? I have been so troubled—you won’t mind my telling you the rest?”

“I? No, indeed. What is it?”

“One of my brothers was in the Northern army. He lived in Kentucky. He died some time ago. Last month the ladies found out that he was a Federal officer, and now I am so afraid they will think—oh, one of them said I ought not to be kept on.”

“No one will disturb you. You are needlessly alarmed. I will speak to Mrs. March. You may feel entirely at ease. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Oh, no,” said Miss Althea, as she rose. “I do think I shall sleep to-night. I wish there was anything I could do to show you how grateful I am.”

“Stop,” said Mrs. Trescot. “Sit down. You can help me. But, first, I want to ask you to consider what I shall say as confidential—absolutely confidential.”

“Yes, of course.” Miss Althea was curious, and her narrowing life had left her little of interest.

“I learned lately, as you know, that the man who killed my husband is one of the managers of the home. It embarrassed me. You can understand that, and why it must keep me from visiting at the home as I should like to do.”

“But he never comes there, Mrs. Trescot. At the visitors’ meeting yesterday Mrs. Dudley said that the colonel had told him that, as he never attended their meetings, he ought to resign, and he has done so.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Trescot. “I have reasons—very good reasons—for desiring to know more of this man. I have trusted you; and now, when you hear anything of interest about him, I want you to come and tell me.”

Miss Althea, much astonished, promised to be watchful, and went away comforted, but with her curiosity ungratified.

On the following day Greyhurst recognized in the morning mail the black-edged envelop and the writing of Constance Trescot. He threw it on the table. He had again the feeling that in a variety of ways he had been made to atone for a minute of passionate resentment and the fatal action in which it had resulted. Always what men called thin-skinned, and feeling keenly what would have affected others but little, he had become, of late, less obviously irritable, but even more sensitive. The hint to resign from the board, which a year before he would have angrily resented, humiliated him the more when, hearing later of Mrs. Trescot’s gift to the home, he knew at once what hand had struck him. He knew, too, as he sat at his table, that to burn this letter would be the wiser course. He could not. It held him as with a spell, as a serpent charms a bird, both drawing and repelling. He tore it open at last, and an inclosure fell out. For a moment he held it unread; and then, as if compelled, read:

SIR:

The inclosed is a copy of a letter my husband left on his desk the
morning of October 7, 1870. You will see that he meant to sacrifice
his position as my uncle’s agent if Mr. Hood still refused to deal
generously with your clients. My husband’s murder and my uncle’s
death left to my sister and to me the privilege of generous dealing,
of which your hand deprived George Trescot.

“CONSTANCE TRESCOT.”

“Curse the woman!” he cried. “I was a fool to read it.” He crumpled Trescot’s letter in his hands as he sat, and then smoothed it out and read it again. He never for a moment doubted that it told the truth. He was a man of too easy morals, but capable of affection and even of love. A new and overwhelming realization of what he had done to this woman swept over him in a storm of self-reproach and pity.

He sat with his face in his hands, his elbows on the table, the copy of Trescot’s letter before him. He lit a match and saw that his hand shook as he held the two papers over it and they slowly burned away. Then, rising, he lighted a cigar and threw himself on a sofa. The cigar went out. He cast it away. How would this end? There must be a limit to the ability of this woman to torture him, and to his own capacity to suffer. After all, he was a man and she but a woman. The matter of his resignation from the board of the home was a trifle, and he was prospering as never before. It was not so easy to deal with the horrible power these letters had to bring back emotions which time had helped to render less poignant. He had a bad memory for faces; but now, as he lay, he saw again the smiling young fellow approaching with his message of peace and kindness. He might have understood even then; but long years of unrestraint had combined with the bitterness of defeat to ruin him. He rose and, returning to his table, tried to lose himself in the enforced study of an important case. It was vain. He went out to a stable near by and mounted a horse he had just bought. It proved unruly, and a furious ride brought back the horse tired and the rider relieved, more at ease, and with a renewed sense of mastery.

His life was too busy to leave him large leisure for painful reflection. He had cases to try, and one which called him away to the capital of the State. He was gone for a week. His political ambitions also claimed a part of his time, as he hoped in a year to be a successful candidate for the legislature, and would then be absent for long periods.

Meanwhile, in one and another way, from Coffin and from the gossip Althea Le Moine willingly and in wonder brought to Constance, she knew of Greyhurst’s habits and expectations, and silently brooded over plans of disturbing her prey, not as yet fully realizing her power, nor comprehending how far the sensitive nature of the man was aiding her purpose.

III

Susan Hood had been a week at St. Ann before she was able to learn anything of the design, so steadily held, that had brought Constance back to a place which she, at least, wished never to see again.

She found the house made pretty and far more comfortable, and a part of the back porch converted into a conservatory. There were riding-horses,—the best they had ever had,—and, in fact, every sign of intention to make St. Ann a place of long, if not permanent, residence.

It seemed also to Susan that there was more cordiality in the many women and the few men who dropped in after their easy Southern way. Evidently there was here some change. It had never been her sister’s habit or desire to be on terms of cordial relation to society at large, so that her present absence of reserve, and her rather watchful eagerness to please everybody, for a time puzzled the elder woman.

No one entered Trescot’s library except Constance. She herself kept it dusted, neat, and unchanged. Susan understood why, being Constance, she should spend daily certain hours alone where Trescot had lived with her and his books. “It would not have been my way,” said Susan; “but, then, I am commonplace.” She thought unwholesome her sister’s attitude in the presence of a great calamity, and found, too, something that seemed to her false in the contrasted aspects of Constance’s life. Then, as usual with her, she convicted herself of ignorant want of charity, having never been in love; and said she must really rid herself of what she called cynicism—as if the cynical are themselves ever conscious of the quality.

A week after her arrival they were seated alone before the fire, now grateful at close of day in the November weather.

“Constance,” said Susan, “tell the maid not to let in any visitors. I want to talk to you. We are so rarely alone, and this constant effort to be agreeable to people you certainly were once far from liking is rather surprising.”

Constance, ignoring a part of her sister’s indictment, said: “My dear, you can’t choose here whom you will see. I never refuse to see people. They don’t understand it. At St. Ann you are always at home if you are in.”

“You must have changed your ways, Conny.”

“Yes, I have,” she returned, with a glance at Susan, who was busily cutting the leaves of a book.

She was at once aware that it would not long be possible to hide from so acute an observer as Susan what she was doing, and why she had returned to St. Ann. Indeed, she confessed to herself a certain prospect of relief in being able to break down the barriers of reserve which she had set up. The old affection, strangely weakened by her marriage and her incapacity to care deeply for more than one person at a time, was returning in full force. When she had confessed that, as Susan said, she had changed, both were silent for a moment, when Susan returned:

“You have been unlike my Constance all summer. I can understand that grief like yours may take many forms; but while abroad you would see no one, not even the most interesting people; here you see every one, even that plaintive little shrivel of a woman, Miss Althea. What brought you here, Constance?”

“I knew that you would ask. It is very simple. A man has murdered my husband and utterly wrecked my life. I tried—oh, very hard!—to accept it as other women accept such things. I could not. I know I shall shock you when I say that for a time I thought of suicide. Then it seemed to me that I must kill him. If I had been a man he would have been dead to-day.”

“Oh, sister! How can you say such things?”

Taking no notice of the gentle protest, Constance continued:

“I gave it up because death is no punishment; it merely destroys the power to feel and suffer. I want that man to feel such anguish as he brought into my life, and I want to know that he suffers. I came here resolved to find some way to make him wretched. I know now that he is sensitive. It seems incredible, but he is. And let me say once for all that I shall go my way, and I shall succeed—I know I shall succeed in making his life unbearable—oh, such as he has made mine!”

Susan had thought of many explanations of her sister’s return, but certainly not of this. She had ceased using the paper-knife, and, as Constance spoke with increasing passion, closed the book. A look at the stern, set face, so white, so beautiful, made the elder woman sure that here was a side of character which was serious and new to her, and not to be dealt with lightly. Turning to her sister, she exclaimed: “Dear, dear sister, drop this; come away with me. Let us go abroad again.”

“No.”

“But it is horrible, and what can you do? Think how that dear fellow would have felt. Think what he did feel even in the face of insult; how patiently he bore with the behavior of these people. Oh, Conny!”

“You may rest assured, Susan, that I have thought of all that; but I am not like you—nor, alas! like him. I have no beliefs which teach me to sit down and cry and pretend to forgive. I don’t believe that any one ever does forgive a wrong so cruel. I, at least, cannot, and I never will—never!”

“You can do nothing. Your lives are far apart. What can you do? Even if revenge were right, you are helpless.”

It seemed to Susan’s common sense past belief.

“And, dear,” she went on, “suppose the impossible; suppose you ruin this wretch, make him suffer, what good will it do?”

“It will make me happy—as happy as I can ever be.”

“Happy, Constance! Can revenge bring happiness? Will it not serve only to keep open wounds which ought to close? Does it not keep in your mind thoughts of a bad man, in place of the beauty and nobleness of the man whose death you wish to avenge? To be in thought a murderer—to wish to kill—that seems to me so dreadful that I ask myself if you can be your own self, or if disease or shock has changed you. Let it all go—oh, dear Conny, let it go. Leave it to God to deal with this man. Be sure that in the end he will repay. He has his ways.”

Constance stood up. “His ways—yes. Suppose I am the instrument of his justice. Why not? How do you know? That seems horrible to you; but I can’t help it; we have no common ground. I have love, and loss, and hate; you have never known them. Leave me to do what I think right, for neither man nor woman can turn me nor stop me. I will never willingly speak of this again, and neither must you.”

Puzzled, worried, and hurt, Susan saw that to reason would be vain; that the appeal of affection was thus lightly put aside filled her with slowly gathering anger.

“I shall do now as you say; but I make no promises. You surely do not expect me to help you.”