by Thomas Dixon
CHAPTER V
ACROSS THE CHASM
When Ben had fully recovered and his father's case looked hopeful, Elsieturned to her study of music, and the Southern boy suddenly waked to thefact that the great mystery of life was upon him. He was in love atlast--genuinely, deeply, without one reservation. He had from habitflirted in a harmless way with every girl he knew. He left home withlittle Marion Lenoir's girlish kiss warm on his lips. He had made love tomany a pretty girl in old Virginia as the red tide of war had ebbed andflowed around Stuart's magic camps.
But now the great hour of the soul had struck. No sooner had he droppedthe first tender words that might have their double meaning, feeling hisway cautiously toward her, than she had placed a gulf of dignity betweenthem, and attempted to cut every tie that bound her life to his.
It had been so sudden it took his breath away. Could he win her? The word"fail" had never been in his vocabulary. It had never run in the speech ofhis people.
Yes, he would win if it was the only thing he did in this world. Andforthwith he set about it. Life took on new meaning and new glory. Whatmattered war or wounds, pain or poverty, jails and revolutions--it was thedawn of life!
He sent her a flower every day and pinned one just like it on his coat.And every night found him seated by her side. She greeted him cordially,but the gulf yawned between them. His courtesy and self-control struck herwith surprise and admiration. In the face of her coldness he carried abouthim an air of smiling deference and gallantry.
She finally told him of her determination to go to New York to pursue herstudies until Phil had finished the term of his enlistment in hisregiment, which had been ordered on permanent duty in the West.
He laughed with his eyes at this announcement, blinking the lashes rapidlywithout moving his lips. It was a peculiar habit of his when deeply movedby a sudden thought. It had flashed over him like lightning that she wastrying to get away from him. She would not do that unless she cared.
"When are you going?" he asked quietly.
"Day after to-morrow."
"Then you will give me one afternoon for a sail on the river to saygood-bye and thank you for what you have done for me and mine?"
She hesitated, laughed, and refused.
"To-morrow at four o'clock I'll call for you," he said firmly. "If there'sno wind, we can drift with the tide."
"I will not have time to go."
"Promptly at four," he repeated as he left.
Ben spent hours that night weighing the question of how far he should dareto speak his love. It had been such an easy thing before. Now it seemed aquestion of life and death. Twice the magic words had been on his lips,and each time something in her manner chilled him into silence.
Was she cold and incapable of love? No; this manner of the North was onthe surface. He knew that deep down within her nature lay banked andsmouldering fires of passion for the one man whose breath could stir itinto flame. He felt this all the keener now that the spell of hercompanionship and the sweet intimacy of her daily ministry to him had beenbroken. The memory of little movements of her petite figure, the glance ofher warm amber eyes, and the touch of her hand--all had their tongues ofrevelation to his eager spirit.
He found her ready at four o'clock.
"You see I decided to go after all," she said.
"Yes, I knew you would," he answered.
She was dressed in a simple suit of navy-blue cloth cut V-shaped at thethroat, showing the graceful lines of her exquisite neck as it melted intothe plump shoulders. She had scorned hoop skirts.
He admired her for this, and yet it made him uneasy. A woman who coulddefy an edict of fashion was a new thing under the sun, and it scaredhim.
They were seated in the little sailboat now, drifting out with the tide.It was a perfect day in October, one of those matchless days of Indiansummer in the Virginia climate when an infinite peace and vast broodingsilence fill the earth and sky until one feels that words are asacrilege.
Neither of them spoke for minutes, and his heart grew bold in thestillness. No girl could be still who was unmoved.
She was seated just in front of him on the left, with her hand idlyrippling the surface of the silvery waters, gazing at the wooded cliff onthe river banks clothed now in their gorgeous robes of yellow, purple,scarlet, and gold.
The soft strains of distant music came from a band in the fort, and herhand in the rippling water seemed its accompaniment.
Ben was conscious only of her presence. Every sight and sound of natureseemed to be blended in her presence. Never in all his life had he seenanything so delicately beautiful as the ripe rose colour of her cheeks,and all the tints of autumn's glory seemed to melt into the gold of herhair.
And those eyes he felt that God had never set in such a face before--richamber, warm and glowing, big and candid, courageous and truthful.
"Are you dead again?" she asked demurely.
"Well, as the Irishman said in answer to his mate's question when he felloff the house, 'not dead--but spacheless.'"
He was quick to see the opening her question with its memories had made,and took advantage of it.
"Look here, Miss Elsie, you're too honest, independent, and candid to playhide-and-seek with me. I want to ask you a plain question. You've beentrying to pick a quarrel of late. What have I done?"
"Nothing. It has simply come to me that our lives are far apart. The gulfbetween us is real and very deep. Your father was but yesterday aslaveholder----"
Ben grinned:
"Yes, your slave-trading grandfather sold them to us the day before."
Elsie blushed and bristled for a fight.
"You won't mind if I give you a few lessons in history, will you?" Benasked softly.
"Not in the least. I didn't know that Southerners studied history," sheanswered, with a toss of her head.
"We made a specialty of the history of slavery, at least. I had a dear oldteacher at home who fairly blazed with light on this subject. He is one ofthe best-read men in America. He happens to be in jail just now. But Ihaven't forgotten--I know it by heart."
"I am waiting for light," she interrupted cynically.
"The South is no more to blame for negro slavery than the North. Ourslaves were stolen from Africa by Yankee skippers. When a slaver arrivedat Boston, your pious Puritan clergyman offered public prayer of thanksthat 'A gracious and overruling Providence had been pleased to bring tothis land of freedom another cargo of benighted heathen to enjoy theblessings of a gospel dispensation----'"
She looked at him with angry incredulity and cried:
"Go on."
"Twenty-three times the Legislature of Virginia passed acts against theimportation of slaves, which the king vetoed on petition of theMassachusetts slave traders. Jefferson made these acts of the king one ofthe grievances of the Declaration of Independence, but a Massachusettsmember succeeded in striking it out. The Southern men in the conventionwhich framed the Constitution put into it a clause abolishing the slavetrade, but the Massachusetts men succeeded in adding a clause extendingthe trade twenty years----"
He smiled and paused.
"Go on," she said, with impatience.
"In Colonial days a negro woman was publicly burned to death in Boston.The first Abolition paper was published in Tennessee by Embree. BenjaminLundy, his successor, could not find a single Abolitionist in Boston. In1828 over half the people of Tennessee favoured Abolition. At this timethere were one hundred and forty Abolition Societies in America--onehundred and three in the South, and not one in Massachusetts. It was notuntil 1836 that Massachusetts led in Abolition--not until all her ownslaves had been sold to us at a profit and the slave trade had beendestroyed----"
She looked at Ben with anger for a moment and met his tantalizing look ofgood humour.
"Can you stand any more?"
"Certainly, I enjoy it."
"I'm just breaking down the barriers--so to speak," he said, with thelaughter still lurking in his eyes, as he looked
steadily ahead.
"By all means go on," she said soberly. "I thought at first you weretrying to tease me. I see that you are in earnest."
"Never more so. This is about the only little path of history I'm at homein--I love to show off in it. I heard a cheerful idiot say the other daythat your father meant to carry the civilization of Massachusetts to theRio Grande until we had a Democracy in America. I smiled. WhileMassachusetts was enforcing laws about the dress of the rich and the poor,founding a church with a whipping-post, jail, and gibbet, and limiting theright to vote to a church membership fixed by pew rents, Carolina was thehome of freedom where first the equal rights of men were proclaimed. NewEngland people worth less than one thousand dollars were prohibited by lawfrom wearing the garb of a gentleman, gold or silver lace, buttons on theknees, or to walk in great boots, or their women to wear silk or scarfs,while the Quakers, Maryland Catholics, Baptists, and Scotch-IrishPresbyterians were everywhere in the South the heralds of man's equalitybefore the law."
"But barring our ancestors, I have some things against the men of thisgeneration."
"Have I, too, sinned and come short?" he asked with mock gravity.
"Our ideals of life are far apart," she firmly declared.
"What ails my ideal?"
"Your egotism, for one thing. The air with which you calmly select whatpleases your fancy. Northern men are bad enough--the insolence of aSoutherner is beyond words!"
LILLIAN GISH AS ELSIE, AND THE SENTINEL.]
"You don't say so!" cried Ben, bursting into a hearty laugh. "Isn't youraunt, Mrs. Farnham, the president of a club?"
"Yes, and she is a very brilliant woman."
"Enlighten me further."
"I deny your heaven-born male kingship. The lord of creation is after alla very inferior animal--nearer the brute creation, weaker in infancy,shorter lived, more imperfectly developed, given to fighting, and addictedto idiocy. I never saw a female idiot in my life--did you?"
"Come to think of it, I never did," acknowledged Ben with comic gravity."What else?"
"Isn't that enough?"
"It's nothing. I agree with everything you say, but it is irrelevant. I'mstudying law, you know."
"I have a personality of my own. You and your kind assume the right toabsorb all lesser lights."
"Certainly, I'm a man."
"I don't care to be absorbed by a mere man."
"Don't wish to be protected, sheltered, and cared for?"
"I dream of a life that shall be larger than the four walls of a home. Ihave never gone into hysterics over the idea of becoming a cook andhousekeeper without wages, and snuffing my life out while another grows,expands, and claims the lordship of the world. I can sing. My voice is tome what eloquence is to man. My ideal is an intellectual companion whowill inspire and lead me to develop all that I feel within to its highestreach."
She paused a moment and looked defiantly into Ben's brown eyes, aboutwhich a smile was constantly playing. He looked away, and again the riverechoed with his contagious laughter. She had to join in spite of herself.He laughed with boyish gayety. It danced in his eyes, and gave spring toevery movement of his slender wiry body. She felt its contagion enfoldher.
His laughter melted into a song. In a voice vibrant with joy he sang, "Ifyou get there before I do, tell 'em I'm comin' too!"
As Elsie listened, her anger grew as she recalled the amazing folly thathad induced her to tell the secret feelings of her inmost soul to this manalmost a stranger. Whence came this miracle of influence about him, thisgift of intimacy? She felt a shock as if she had been immodest. She was inan agony of doubt as to what he was thinking of her, and dreaded to meethis gaze.
And yet, when he turned toward her, his whole being a smiling compound ofdark Southern blood and bone and fire, at the sound of his voice all doubtand questioning melted.
"Do you know," he said earnestly, "that you are the funniest, mostcharming girl I ever met?"
"Thanks. I've heard your experience has been large for one of your age."
Ben's eyes danced.
"Perhaps, yes. You appeal to things in me that I didn't know werethere--to all the senses of body and soul at once. Your strength of mind,with its conceits, and your quick little temper seem so odd and out ofplace, clothed in the gentleness of your beauty."
"I was never more serious in my life. There are other things more personalabout you that I do not like."
"What?"
"Your cavalier habits."
"Cavalier fiddlesticks. There are no Cavaliers in my country. We are allCovenanter and Huguenot folks. The idea that Southern boys are lazyloafing dreamers is a myth. I was raised on the catechism."
"You love to fish and hunt and frolic--you flirt with every girl you meet,and you drink sometimes. I often feel that you are cruel and that I do notknow you."
Ben's face grew serious, and the red scar in the edge of his hair suddenlybecame livid with the rush of blood.
"Perhaps I don't mean that you shall know all yet," he said slowly. "Myideal of a man is one that leads, charms, dominates, and yet eludes. Iconfess that I'm close kin to an angel and a devil, and that I await awoman's hand to lead me into the ways of peace and life."
The spiritual earnestness of the girl was quick to catch the subtle appealof his last words. His broad, high forehead, straight, masterly nose, withits mobile nostrils, seemed to her very manly at just that moment and veryappealing. A soft answer was on her lips.
He saw it, and leaned toward her in impulsive tenderness. A timid look onher face caused him to sink back in silence.
They had now drifted near the city. The sun was slowly sinking in asmother of fiery splendour that mirrored its changing hues in the stillwater. The hush of the harvest fullness of autumn life was over allnature. They passed a camp of soldiers and then a big hospital on thebanks above. A gun flashed from the hill, and the flag dropped from itsstaff.
The girl's eyes lingered on the flower in his coat a moment and then onthe red scar in the edge of his dark hair, and somehow the differencebetween them seemed to melt into the falling twilight. Only his nearnesswas real. Again a strange joy held her.
He threw her a look of tenderness, and she began to tremble. A sea gullpoised a moment above them and broke into a laugh.
Bending nearer, he gently took her hand, and said:
"I love you!"
A sob caught her breath and she buried her face on her arm.
"I am for you, and you are for me. Why beat your wings against the thingthat is and must be? What else matters? With all my sins and faults myland is yours--a land of sunshine, eternal harvests, and everlasting song,old-fashioned and provincial perhaps, but kind and hospitable. Around itshumblest cottage song birds live and mate and nest and never leave. Thewinged ones of your own cold fields have heard their call, and the skyto-night will echo with their chatter as they hurry southward. Elsie, myown, I too have called--come; I love you!"
She lifted her face to him full of tender spiritual charm, her eyesburning their passionate answer.
He bent and kissed her.
"Say it! Say it!" he whispered.
"I love you!" she sighed.
