The Purchase Price by Emerson Hough (ebook reader screen .txt) 📕

knock at the door, and without much pause.
Hector entered, somewhat excited.

"Monsieur,—Madame!" he exclaimed. "One comes!"

"Who is it?" demanded Dunwody, frowning.

"Mon pere! He is come but now from Tallwoods, Monsieur."

"What is wrong out there? Tell him to come in."

"I go."

A moment later, Dunwody left the room, to meet old Eleazar, who made such response as he could to the hurried queries. "Monsieur," said he, "I have ridden down from the hills. There is trouble. In the neighborhood are some who are angry because their negroes have disappear'. They accuse Monsieur Dunwodee of being the cause, and say that he is traitor, a turncoat. This very night a band are said to plan an attack upon the house of monsieur! I have met above there Monsieur Clayton, Monsieur Bill Jones, Monsieur le Docteur Jamieson, and others, who ride to the assistance of Monsieur Dunwodee. It is this very night, and I—there being no other to come—have come to advise. Believing that monsieur might desire to carry with him certain friends, I have brought the large carriage. It is here!"

"Thank God!" said Dunwody, "they don't vote with me, but they ride with me still—they're my neighbors, my friends, even yet!

"Hector," he exclaimed suddenly,—"come here!" Then, as they both listened, he went on: "Tell the people there can not be a meeting, after all. I am going back to my house, to see what is on up yonder. Hector, can you get a fresh horse? And are there any friends who would go with you?"

The sturdy young cooper did not lack in courage, and his response was instant. "Assuredly I have a horse, Monsieur," was his reply. "Assuredly we have friends. Six, ten, seven, h'eight person shall go with us within the hour! But I must tell—"

Jeanne was at his elbow, catching scent of something of this, guessing at possible danger. She broke out now into loud expostulations at this rashness of her spouse, parent of this progeny of theirs, thus undertaking to expose himself to midnight dangers. Hector, none the less, shook his head.

"It is necessary that one go armed," commented Eleazar calmly. He patted with affection the long barreled piece which lay over his own arm.

Much of this conversation, loud and excited as it was, could not fail to reach the ears of Josephine, who presently had joined them, and who now heard the story of the old man, so fully confirming all Dunwody said.

"There is trouble! There is trouble!" she said, with her usual prompt decision. "There is room for me in the coach. I am going along."

"You—what in the world do you mean? You'll do nothing of the sort!" rejoined Dunwody. "It's going to be no place for women, up there. It's a fight, this time!"

"Perhaps not for Jeanne or Hector's mother, or for many women; but for me it is the very place where I belong! I made that trouble yonder. It was I, not you, who caused that disaffection among the blacks. Your neighbors ought to blame me, not you—I will explain it all to them in a moment, in an instant. Surely, they will listen to me. Yes, I am going."

Dunwody looked at her in grave contemplation for an instant.

"In God's name, my dear girl, how can you find it in your heart to see that place again? But do you find it? Will you go? If you insist, we'll take care of you."

"Of course! Of course!" she replied, and even then was busy hunting for her wraps. "Get ready! Let us start."

"Have cushions and blankets for the carriage, Eleazar," said Dunwody quietly. "Better get a little lunch of some sort to take along. Go down to the barn yonder and get fresh horses. I don't think this team could stand it all the way back."

CHAPTER XXXI THE SPECTER IN THE HOUSE

The travel-stained figures of Doctor Jamieson, Judge Clayton and the Honorable William Jones met the Dunwody coach just as it was leaving at the upper end of St. Genevieve's main street. They also had found fresh horses, and in the belief of Dunwody it was quite as well that they rode horseback, in common with the followers of Hector, who presently came trooping after him. The interior of the coach seemed to him more fittingly reserved for this lady and himself. None the less, the Honorable William had abated none of his native curiosity. It was his head which presently intruded at the coach window.

"Ah, ha!" exclaimed he. "What? Again? This time there is no concealment, Dunwody! Come, confess!"

"I will confess now as much as I ever had to confess," retorted Dunwody angrily. "If you do not know yet of this lady, I will introduce you once more. She is the Countess St. Auban, formerly of Europe, and now of any place that suits her. It is no business of yours or of mine why she was once there, or cares to go there again; but she is going along with us out to Tallwoods."

Judge Clayton made salutation .more in keeping with good courtesy than had his inquisitive friend. "I have been following the fortunes of this lady somewhat attentively of late," he said, at length. "At least, she has not been idle!"

"Precisely!" ventured Josephine, leaning out the window. "That is why I am coming to-night. I understand there has been trouble down here,—that it came out of the work of our Colonization Society—"

"Rather!" said Clayton grimly.

"I was back of that. But, believe me, as I told Mr. Dunwody, I was not in the least responsible for the running off of negroes in this neighborhood. I thought, if I should go out there and tell these other gentlemen, that they would understand."

"That's mighty nice of you," ventured the Honorable William Jones. "But if we don't git there before midnight, they'll be so full of whisky and devilment that I don't think they'll listen even to you, Ma'am."

"It is pretty bad, I'm afraid," said Judge Clayton. "What with one thing and another, this country of ours has been in a literal state of anarchy for the last year or two. What the end is going to be, I'm sure I don't see.

"And the immediate cause of all this sort of thing, my dear Madam," he continued, as he rode alongside, "why, it seems to be just that girl Lily, that we had all the trouble about last year. By the way, what's become of that girl? Too bad—she was more than half white!"

[Illustration: By the way, what's become of that girl?]

"Yes, it is all about that girl Lily," said Josephine slowly, restraining in her own soul the impulse to cry out the truth to him, to tell him why this girl was almost white, why she had features like his own. "That is the trouble, I am afraid,—that girl Lily, and her problem! If we could understand all of that, perhaps we could see the reason for this anarchy!"

The group broke apart, as the exigencies of the road traveled required. Now and again some conversation passed between the occupants of the carriage and the horsemen who loosely grouped about it as they advanced. The great coach swayed its way on up through the woods into the hills, over a road never too good and now worse than usual. They had thirty miles or more to drive, most of it after dark. Could they make that distance in time?

Dunwody, moody, silent, yet tense, keyed to the highest point, now made little comment. Even when left alone, he ventured upon no intimate theme with his companion in the coach; nor did she in turn speak upon any subject which admitted argument. Once she congratulated him upon his recovery from what had seemed so dangerous a hurt.

"But that is nothing now," he said. "I got off better than I had any right,—limp a little, maybe, but they say that even that is mostly a matter of habit now. Jamieson says his fiddle string may have slipped a little! And you?"

"Oh, perfectly well," she answered. "I even think I may be happy—you know, I must start my French and English classes before long."

Silent now in part as to matters present, wholly silent as to matters past, these two went on into the night, neither loosing the tight rein on self. Swaying and jolting its way upward and outward into the wilder country, the coach at last had so far plunged into the night that they were almost within touch of the valley in which lay the Dunwody lands. Eleazar, the trapper, rode on the box with the negro driver who had been impressed into service. It was the old trapper who at length called for a halt.

"Listen!" said he. "What is that?"

Dunwody heard him, and as the coach pulled up, thrust his head out of the window. The sound was repeated.

"I hear it!" cried he. "Rifle firing! I'm afraid we're going to be too late. Drive on, there, fast!"

Finally they reached the point in the road just below the shut-in, where the hills fell back in the approach to the little circular valley. Dunwody's gaze was bent eagerly out and ahead. "My God!" he exclaimed, at length. "We are too late! Look!"

At the same moment there came excited cries from the horsemen who followed. Easily visible now against the black background of the night, there showed a flower of light, rising and falling, strengthening.

"Drive!" cried Dunwody; and now the sting of the lash urged on the weary team. They swung around the turn of the shut-in, and came at full speed into the approach across the valley. Before them lay the great Tallwoods mansion house. It stood before them a pillar of fire, prophetic, it might be repeated, of a vast and cleansing catastrophe soon to come to that state and this nation; a catastrophe which alone could lay the specter in our nation's house.

They were in time to see the last of the disaster, but too late to offer remedy. By the time the coach had pulled up at the head of the gravel way, before the yet more rapid horsemen had flung themselves from their saddles, the end easily was to be guessed. The house had been fired in a half score places. At the rear, even now, the long streaks of flame were reaching up to the cornice, casting all the front portion of the house, and the lawn which lay before it, into deep shadow. The shrubbery and trees thus outlined showed black and grim.

The men of the Tallwoods party dashed here and there among the covering of trees back of the house. There were shots, hastily exchanged, glimpses of forms slinking away across the fields. But the attacking party had done their work; and now, alarmed by the sudden appearance of a resistance stronger than they had expected, were making their escape. Once in a while there was heard a loud derisive shout, now and again the crack of a spiteful rifle, resounding in echoes against the hillsides.

Dunwody was among the first to disappear, in search of these besiegers. For an instant Josephine was left alone, undecided, alarmed, in front of the great doors. Eleazar, to save the plunging team, had now wheeled the vehicle back, and was seeking a place for it lower down the lawn. It was as she stood thus hesitant that there approached her from some point in the bushes a disheveled figure. Turning, she recognized none other than old Sally, her former jailer and sometime friend.

"Sally," she cried; "Sally! What is it? Who has done this? Where are they? What is it all about? Can't anything be done?"

But Sally, terrified beyond reason, could exclaim only one word: "Whah is he? Whah's Mr. Dunwody? Quick!" An instant later, she too was gone.

At the same moment, Dunwody, weapon in hand, dashed around the corner of the house and up on the front gallery. Apparently he was searching for some one whom