In those days, there was a pleasant spice of uncertainty about Southern journeyings. Cars, steamboats, and stages ran in happy independence of each other and the time-table. The traveller never knew at what point of juniper swamp, or pine barren, or cotton plantation, he would be set down to while away some hours in botanical or ethnological investigations, if his mind were sufficiently at ease, or in chewing the bitter cud of impatience, if it were not. Defective machinery and lazy officials labored mightily together to miss connections, and wherever human inefficiency came short, down swept a hurricane from the skies, and strewed the roads with prostrate trunks of trees, through which the cumbrous stage coach had literally to hew its path.
More than one such delay attended Bergan\'s progress southward. Under their teasing friction, the shadowy anxiety with which he had set out, increased to a positive weight of alarm. Reaching Savalla on the twelfth evening, he stopped neither for rest nor refreshment, but looked up a horse, flung himself into the saddle, and set off toward Berganton at a rapid rate. Outside the city limits, however, he was forced to slacken his pace. The night was dark, no faintest gleam of moon or star tempered the black obscurity of the tree-arched and swamp-bordered road. Compelled thus to feel his way, as it were, it was near midnight when he came upon the outlying fields of Oakstead. Reluctantly he told himself that an interview with Carice, to-night, was out of the question; she and all the household were certain to be fast asleep, it was doubtful if even the faintest outline of the darkened dwelling would be discernible through the murky night. He had no choice but to ride on to Berganton.
Scarcely had he reached this conclusion, when a radiant window shone vision-like through the trees; a little farther on, and the cottage, though yet distant, came full into view through an opening in the forest, brilliantly illuminated from roof to foundation as for a festivity of no ordinary magnitude. Even the surrounding lawn was lighted up into the semblance of day; and in its remotest corner, a group of negroes, dancing to some strain of music inaudible to the wondering spectator, looked fantastic enough for the unsubstantial images of a dream.
For a moment or two, Bergan suspected his jaded senses of playing him false, as a step preparatory to taking leave of him altogether. There was something too incongruous to be real, between this gay scene of festivity and the picture presented by Doctor Remy\'s last letter,—a dull, silent house, its master a feeble, exacting convalescent, its mistress and daughter worn out with anxiety and watching. An intuition of some unlooked-for calamity seized him. Putting spurs to his horse, he dashed over the mile that intervened between him and the cottage, at a scarcely less furious rate than that with which Vic had borne him over the same road—how well he remembered it!—just one year ago. He did not suspect that he was now to taste the bitterest consequences of that ride.
In a very few moments, he rode through the open gates of Oakstead. Here, he found the avenue to the house encumbered with teams and saddle-horses, tied to every tree and post. The every-day aspect of these sleepy animals was like a bucket of cold water to his excited imagination. Strains of dancing music, too, came to his ear,—flutes and violins, none too well played, sent forth the notes of a popular air. Plainly, he had been a fool to connect the thought of calamity with anything so exceedingly common-place as an evening party. If Godfrey Bergan chose to call in his friends and neighbors to dance over his restoration to health, who should gainsay him? Convalescents had their fancies, and must be humored.
In this cooler frame of mind, it naturally occurred to Bergan that he was in no fit condition to face a festal throng. His appearance, thus way-worn and travel-stained, would be scarcely more timely than that of the Ancient Mariner to the wedding guest. It would look as if he, too, had a tale of horror to impart, and Carice might be unpleasantly startled,—Carice, who little imagined him so near to her! At the thought, a strange, indefinable thrill and shiver passed over him, hard to define as either pleasure or pain.
After a moment\'s consideration, he dismounted, and walked quietly round to the spot where the negroes still kept up their lively dance. One of them, Bruno by name, stood a little apart, a smiling spectator of the merriment that he was too old to join. It was easy to touch him on the shoulder, without attracting the notice of the rest. The negro turned, and instantly recognized Bergan; but his exclamation of surprise was cut short by the young man\'s significant gesture, and he silently followed him to a spot equi-distant between the cottage and the dancers.
"All well, Bruno?" was Bergan\'s first inquiry.
"All bery well, Massa Arling. You\'s welcome back, sah. But I\'se sorry you\'s too late for de weddin\'."
The wedding,—the word fell almost meaninglessly on Bergan\'s ear, so intent was he upon satisfying himself that his late anxieties had been groundless. "And Miss Carice," he went on, "is she quite well, too?"
Bruno smiled. "Yes, massa, I \'spec so, tho\' she do look mighty pale and peaked, dese yere last weeks. But dey mostly look so, at sich times, I s\'pose. She\'ll be better when de weddin\'s ober, an\' all de fuss and flurry."
This second mention of "the wedding" penetrated to Bergan\'s understanding, and awakened a faint emotion of surprise.
"The wedding!—whose wedding?" he asked.
Bruno opened his eyes wide in astonishment. "Why, don\' you know, sah? I thought you\'d come on purpose. Miss Carice\'s weddin\', to be sure."
It was Bergan\'s turn to look more than astonished, confounded. "Miss Carice\'s wedding!" he repeated, as doubting the trustworthiness of his own ears.
"Yes, sah, to Doctor Remy, sah. Dey had—"
Bruno stopped short in alarm. Bergan\'s face had grown deadly pale, his blank stare was that of a man who neither saw nor heard. For a few merciful moments, he was simply stunned with the suddenness and severity of the shock. Too soon his benumbed senses began to revive, he put his hand to his head, where a dull, heavy pain was beginning to make itself felt; mechanically he sat down on the grass, and his breath came hard like that of a man stricken with apoplexy.
With a delicacy not uncommon in his race, Bruno turned his eyes away. A trusted servant of the household, he had seen Bergan and Carice together enough to be able to divine something of the state of the case.
Slowly, one by one, Bergan\'s thoughts came out of chaos, and ranged themselves into something like order. This, then, was the reason why Doctor Remy had so persistently discouraged his earlier return to Berganton, and allayed his anxiety with plausible statements respecting Carice and her father,—that he might supplant him in her affections. But why? It must be taken as evidence that he had estimated the doctor\'s character more correctly than he knew, that it never once occurred to him as possible that love for Carice had been the doctor\'s motive; yet, considered solely as holding the reversion of the Oakstead estate, her hand was scarcely worth the labor and treachery it had cost.
There was so little to reward investigation in this direction, that Bergan\'s thoughts came back to his own blighted hopes, and here he was pierced with the sharpest pain that he had yet felt. The treachery of the doctor was as nothing to the faithlessness of Carice. Two months,—yea, two days ago, he would have staked all his hopes for time and eternity on her truth. Fair and delicate as was the cast of her beauty, and sweet and gentle as was her manner, there had always been a certain quiet steadfastness about her, which was one of her most potent charms. All hearts felt intuitively that they might safely trust in her. What subtle or powerful influence could have been brought to bear upon her, to make her so belie herself!
He looked up. "Bruno, how long has this been going on?"
The negro did not quite understand, but made shift to guess what was meant.
"De engagement, sah? since October, I b\'lieve."
"And how long has Doctor Remy visited here?"
"Oh, a good while, \'bout eber since you went away. But after massa was took sick, he come oftener, ob course—ebery day, sometimes two, tree times a day. Massa got so—\'pendent on him, like, he couldn\'t bear to have him out ob de house, one time."
Bergan fell into thought again. He began dimly to understand something of the sort of pressure to which Carice had been subjected, and the motives that had governed her,—not that he held her exonerated, by any means—only she was a little less culpable than she had seemed, at first. But if she had sinned, poor child! how miserably she would be punished! What a sterile soil, what a chill, unfriendly climate, awaited this delicate flower, in Doctor Remy\'s hands! It was as if a lily should think to root itself in a rock, or a rose expect to bud and blossom on an iceberg. Besides—why had he not thought of it before?—to-morrow, perhaps, in t............