第11章

In spite of the awkward termination of his visit,--or perhaps BECAUSE of it,--Courtland called again at the plantation within the week.But this time he was accompanied by Drummond, and was received by Miss Miranda Dows, a tall, aquiline-nosed spinster of fifty, whose old-time politeness had become slightly affected, and whose old beliefs had given way to a half-cynical acceptance of new facts.Mr.Drummond, delighted with the farm and its management, was no less fascinated by Miss Sally, while Courtland was now discreet enough to divide his attentions between her and her aunt, with the result that he was far from participating in Champney's conviction of Miss Miranda's unimportance.To the freedmen she still represented the old implacable task-mistress, and it was evident that they superstitiously believed that she still retained a vague power of overriding the Fourteenth Amendment at her pleasure, and was only to be restrained by the mediation of the good-humored and sensible Miss Sally.Courtland was quick to see the value of this influence in the transition state of the freedmen, and pointed it out to his principal.Drummond's previous doubts and skepticism, already weakened by Miss Sally's fascinations, vanished entirely at this prospect of beneficially utilizing these lingering evils of slavery.He was convinced, he was even enthusiastic.The foreign investors were men to be bought out; the estate improved and enlarged by the company, and the fair owners retained in the management and control.Like most prejudiced men, Drummond's conversion was sudden and extreme, and, being a practical man, was at once acted upon.At a second and third interview the preliminaries were arranged, and in three weeks from Courtland's first visit, the Dows' plantation and part of Major Reed's were merged in the "Drummond Syndicate," and placed beyond financial uncertainty.Courtland remained to represent the company as superintendent at Redlands, and with the transfer of the English investments Champney retired, as he had suggested, to a smaller venture of his own, on a plantation a few miles distant which the company had been unable to secure.

During this interval Courtland had frequent interviews with Miss Sally, and easy and unrestrained access to her presence.He had never again erred on the side of romance or emotion; he had never again referred to the infelix letter and photograph; and, without being obliged to confine himself strictly to business affairs, he had maintained an even, quiet, neighborly intercourse with her.

Much of this was the result of his own self-control and soldierly training, and gave little indication of the deeper feeling that he was conscious lay beneath it.At times he caught the young girl's eyes fixed upon him with a mischievous curiosity.A strange thrill went through him; there are few situations so subtle and dangerous as the accidental confidences and understandings of two young people of opposite sex, even though the question of any sentimental inclination be still in abeyance.Courtland knew that Miss Sally remembered the too serious attitude he had taken towards her past.

She might laugh at it, and even resent it, but she KNEW it, remembered it, knew that HE did, and this precious knowledge was confined to themselves.It was in their minds when there was a pause in their more practical and conventional conversation, and was even revealed in the excessive care which Miss Sally later took to avert at the right moment her mischievously smiling eyes.Once she went farther.Courtland had just finished explaining to her a plan for substituting small farm buildings for the usual half-cultivated garden-patches dear to the negro field-hand, and had laid down the drawings on the table in the office, when the young lady, leaning against it with her hands behind her, fixed her bright gray eyes on his serious face.

"I vow and protest, co'nnle," she said, dropping into one of the quaint survivals of an old-time phraseology peculiar to her people, "I never allowed yo' could just give yo'self up to business, soul and body, as yo' do, when I first met yo' that day.""Why, what did you think me?" he asked quickly.

Miss Sally, who had a Southern aptitude for gesture, took one little hand from behind her, twirled it above her head with a pretty air of disposing of some airy nothing in a presumably masculine fashion, and said, "Oh, THAT.""I am afraid I did not impress you then as a very practical man,"he said, with a faint color.

"I thought you roosted rather high, co'nnle, to pick up many worms in the mo'ning.But," she added with a dazzling smile, "I reckon from what yo' said about the photograph, yo' thought I wasn't exactly what yo' believed I ought to be, either."He would have liked to tell her then and there that he would have been content if those bright, beautiful eyes had never kindled with anything but love or womanly aspiration; that that soft, lazy, caressing voice had never been lifted beyond the fireside or domestic circle; that the sunny, tendriled hair and pink ears had never inclined to anything but whispered admiration; and that the graceful, lithe, erect figure, so independent and self-contained, had been satisfied to lean only upon his arm for support.He was conscious that this had been in his mind when he first saw her; he was equally conscious that she was more bewilderingly fascinating to him in her present inaccessible intelligence and practicality.

"I confess," he said, looking into her eyes with a vague smile, "Idid not expect you would be so forgetful of some one who had evidently cared for you.""Meaning Mr.Chet Brooks, or Mr.Joyce Masterton, or both.That's like most yo' men, co'nnle.Yo' reckon because a girl pleases yo'