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GORDON KEITH

by

THOMAS NELSON PAGE

With Illustrations by George Wright

1903







TO

A GRANDDAUGHTER

OF ONE LOIS HUNTINGTON




CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I. GORDON KEITH'S PATRIMONY
II. GENERAL KEITH BECOMES AN OVERSEER
III. THE ENGINEER AND THE SQUIRE
IV. TWO YOUNG MEN
V. THE RIDGE COLLEGE
VI. ALICE YORKE
VII. MRS. YORKE FINDS A GENTLEMAN
VIII. MR. KEITH'S IDEALS
IX. MR. KEITH IS UNPRACTICAL
X. MRS. YORKE CUTS A KNOT
XI. GUMBOLT
XII. KEITH DECLINES AN OFFER
XIII. KEITH IN NEW YORK
XIV. THE HOLD-UP
XV. MRS. YORKE MAKES A MATCH
XVI. KEITH VISITS NEW YORK, AND MRS. LANCASTER SEES A GHOST
XVII. KEITH MEETS NORMAN
XVIII. MRS. LANCASTER
XIX. WICKERSHAM AND PHRONY
XX. MRS. LANCASTER'S WIDOWHOOD
XXI. THE DIRECTORS' MEETING
XXII. MRS. CREAMER'S BALL
XXIII. GENERAL KEITH VISITS STRANGE LANDS
XXIV. KEITH TRIES HIS FORTUNES ABROAD
XXV. THE DINNER AT MRS. WICKERSHAM'S
XXVI. A MISUNDERSTANDING
XXVII. PHRONY TRIPPER AND THE REV. MR. RIMMON
XXVIII. ALICE LANCASTER FINDS PHRONY
XXIX. THE MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE
XXX. "SNUGGLERS' ROOST"
XXXI. TERPY'S LAST DANCE AND WICKERSHAM'S FINAL THROW
XXXII. THE RUN ON THE BANK
XXXIII. RECONCILIATION
XXXIV. THE CONSULTATION
XXXV. THE MISTRESS OF THE LAWNS
XXXVI. THE OLD IDEAL




ILLUSTRATIONS

She was the first to break the silence (frontispiece)
"If you don't go back to your seat I'll dash your brains
out," said Keith
"Then why don't you answer me?"
Sprang over the edge of the road into the thick bushes below
"Why, Mr. Keith!" she exclaimed
"Sit down. I want to talk to you"
"It is he! 'Tis he!" she cried
"Lois--I have come--" he began





CHAPTER I

_INTRODUCTORY_

GORDON KEITH'S PATRIMONY

Gordon Keith was the son of a gentleman. And this fact, like the cat the
honest miller left to his youngest son, was his only patrimony. As in
that case also, it stood to the possessor in the place of a good many
other things. It helped him over many rough places. He carried it with
him as a devoted Romanist wears a sacred scapulary next to the heart.

His father, General McDowell Keith of "Elphinstone," was a gentleman of
the old kind, a type so old-fashioned that it is hardly accepted these
days as having existed. He knew the Past and lived in it; the Present he
did not understand, and the Future he did not know. In his latter days,
when his son was growing up, after war had swept like a vast inundation
over the land, burying almost everything it had not borne away, General
Keith still survived, unchanged, unmoved, unmarred, an antique memorial
of the life of which he was a relic. His one standard was that of a
gentleman.

This idea was what the son inherited from the father along with some
other old-fashioned things which he did not know the value of at first,
but which he came to understand as he grew older.

When in after times, in the swift rush of life in a great city, amid
other scenes and new manners, Gordon Keith looked back to the old life
on the Keith plantation, it appeared to him as if he had lived then in
another world.

Elphinstone was, indeed, a world to itself: a long, rambling house, set
on a hill, with white-pillared verandahs, closed on the side toward the
evening sun by green Venetian blinds, and on the other side looking away
through the lawn trees over wide fields, brown with fallow, or green
with cattle-dotted pasture-land and waving grain, to the dark rim of
woods beyond. To the westward "the Ridge" made a straight, horizontal
line, except on clear days, when the mountains still farther away showed
a tenderer blue scalloped across the sky.

A stranger passing through the country prior to the war would have heard
much of Elphinstone, the Keith plantation, but he would have seen from
the main road (which, except in summer, was intolerably bad) only long
stretches of rolling fields well tilled, and far beyond them a grove on
a high hill, where the mansion rested in proud seclusion amid its
immemorial oaks and elms, with what appeared to be a small hamlet lying
about its feet. Had he turned in at the big-gate and driven a mile or
so, he would have found that Elphinstone was really a world to itself;
almost as much cut off from the outer world as the home of the Keiths
had been in the old country. A number of little blacks would have opened
the gates for him; several boys would have run to take his horse, and he
would have found a legion of servants about the house. He would have
found that the hamlet was composed of extensive stables and barns, with
shops and houses, within which mechanics were plying their trades with
the ring of hammers, the clack of looms, and the hum of
spinning-wheels-all for the plantation; whilst on a lower hill farther
to the rear were the servants' quarters laid out in streets, filled
with children.

Had the visitor asked for shelter, he would have received, whatever his
condition, a hospitality as gracious as if he had been the highest in
the land; he would have found culture with philosophy and wealth with
content, and he would have come away charmed with the graciousness of
his entertainment. And yet, if from any other country or region than the
South, he would have departed with a feeling of mystification, as though
he had been drifting in a counter-current and had discovered a part of
the world sheltered and to some extent secluded from the general
movement and progress of life.

This plantation, then, was Gordon's world. The woods that rimmed it were
his horizon, as they had been that of the Keiths for generations; more
or less they always affected his horizon. His father appeared to the boy
to govern the world; he governed the most important part of it--the
plantation--without ever raising his voice. His word had the convincing
quality of a law of nature. The quiet tones of his voice were
irresistible. The calm face, lighting up at times with the flash of his
gray eyes, was always commanding: he looked so like the big picture in
the library, of a tall, straight man, booted and spurred, and partly in
armor, with a steel hat over his long curling hair, and a grave face
that looked as if the sun were on it. It was no wonder, thought the boy,
that he was given a sword by the State when he came back from the
Mexican War; no wonder that the Governor had appointed him Senator, a
position he declined because of his wife's ill health. Gordon's wonder
was that his father was not made President or Commander-in-Chief of the
army. It no more occurred to him that any one could withstand his father
than that the great oak-trees in front of the house, which it took his
outstretched arms six times to girdle, could fall.

Yet it came to pass that within a few years an invading army marched
through the plantation, camped on the lawn, and cut down the trees; and
Gordon Keith, whilst yet a boy, came to see Elphinstone in the hands of
strangers, and his father and himself thrown out on the world.

His mother died while Gordon was still a child. Until then she had not
appeared remarkable to the boy: she was like the atmosphere, the
sunshine, and the blue, arching sky, all-pervading and existing as a
matter of course. Yet, as her son remembered her in after life, she was
the centre of everything, never idle, never hurried; every one and
everything revolved about her and received her light and warmth. She was
the refuge in every trouble, and her smile was enchanting. It was only
after that last time, when the little boy stood by his mother's bedside
awed and weeping silently in the shadow of the great darkness that was
settling upon them, that he knew how absolutely she had been the centre
and breath of his life. His father was kneeling beside the bed, with a
face as white as his mother's, and a look of such mingled agony and
resignation that Gordon never forgot it. As, because of his father's
teaching, the son in later life tried to be just to every man, so, for
his mother's sake, he remembered to be kind to every woman.

In the great upheaval that came just before the war, Major Keith stood
for the Union, but was defeated. When his State seceded, he raised a
regiment in the congressional district which he had represented for one
or two terms. As his duties took him from home much of the time, he sent
Gordon to the school of the noted Dr. Grammer, a man of active mind and
also active arm, named by his boys, from the latter quality,
"Old Hickory."

Gordon, like some older men, hoped for war with all his soul. A
great-grandfather an officer of the line in the Revolution, a
grandfather in the navy of 1812, and his father a major in the Mexican
War, with a gold-hilted sword presented him by the State, gave him a
fair pedigree, and he looked forward to being a great general himself.
He would be Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great at least. It was his
preference for a career, unless being a mountain stage-driver was. He
had seen one or two such beings in the mountains when he accompanied his
father once on a canvass that he was making for Congress, enthroned
like Jove, in clouds of oil-coats and leather, mighty in power and
speech; and since then his dreams had been blessed at times with
lumbering coaches and clanking teams.

One day Gordon was sent for to come home. When he came down-stairs next
morning his father was standing in the drawing-room, dressed in full
uniform, though it was not near as showy as Gordon had expected it to
be, or as dozens of uniforms the boy had seen the day before about the
railway-stations on his journey home, gorgeous with gold lace. He was
conscious, however, that some change had taken place, and a resemblance
to the man-in-armor in the picture over the library mantel suddenly
struck the boy. There was the high look, the same light in the eyes, the
same gravity about the mouth; and when his father, after taking leave of
the servants, rode away in his gray uniform, on his bay horse
"Chevalier," with his sword by his side, to join his men at the
county-seat, and let Gordon accompany him for the first few miles, the
boy felt as though he had suddenly been transported to a world of which
he had read, and were riding behind a knight of old. Ah! if there were
only a few Roundheads formed at the big-gate, how they would
scatter them!

About the third year of the war, Mr. Keith, now a brigadier-general,
having been so badly wounded that it was supposed he could never again
be fit for service in the field, was sent abroad by his government to
represent it in England in a semi-confidential, semi-diplomatic
position. He had been abroad before--quite an unusual occurrence at
that time.

General Keith could not bring himself to leave his boy behind him and
have the ocean between them, so he took Gordon with him.

After a perilous night in running the blockade, when they were fired on
and escaped only by sending up rockets and passing as one of the
blockading squadron, General Keith and Gordon transferred at Nassau to
their steamer. The vessel touched at Halifax, and among the passengers
taken on there were an American lady, Mrs. Wickersham of New York, and
her son Ferdy Wickersham, a handsome, black-eyed boy a year or two older
than Gordon. As the two lads were the only passengers aboard of about
their age, they soon became as friendly as any other young animals would
have become, and everything went on balmily until a quarrel arose over a
game which they were playing on the lower deck. As General Keith had
told Gordon that he must be very discreet while on board and not get
into any trouble, the row might have ended in words had not the sympathy
of the sailors been with Gordon. This angered the other boy in the
dispute, and he called Gordon a liar. This, according to Gordon's code,
was a cause of war. He slapped Ferdy in the mouth, and the next second
they were at it hammer-and-tongs. So long as they were on their feet,
Ferdy, who knew something of boxing, had much the best of it and
punished Gordon severely, until the latter, diving into him, seized him.

In wrestling Ferdy was no match for him, for Gordon had wrestled with
every boy on the plantation, and after a short scuffle he lifted Ferdy
and flung him flat on his back on the deck, jarring the wind out of him.
Ferdy refused to make up and went off crying to his mother, who from
that time filled the ship with her abuse of Gordon.

The victory of the younger boy gave him great prestige among the
sailors, and Mike Doherty, the bully of the fore-castle, gave him boxing
lessons during all the rest of the voyage, teaching him the mystery of
the "side swing" and the "left-hand upper-cut," which Mike said was "as
good as a belaying-pin."

"With a good, smooth tongue for the girlls and a good upper-cut for thim
as treads on your toes, you are aall right," said Mr. Doherty; "you're
rigged for ivery braize. But, boy, remimber to be quick with both, and
don't forgit who taaught you."

Thus, it was that, while Gordon Keith was still a boy of about twelve or
thirteen, instead of being on the old plantation rimmed by the great
woods, where his life had hitherto been spent, except during the brief
period when he had been at Dr. Grammer's school, he found himself one
summer in a little watering-place on the shores of an English lake as
blue as a china plate, set amid ranges of high green hills, on which
nestled pretty white or brown villas surrounded by gardens and parks.

The water was a new element for Gordon. The home of the Keiths was in
the high country back from the great watercourses, and Gordon had never
had a pair of oars in his hands, nor did he know how to swim; but he
meant to learn. The sight of the boats rowed about by boys of his own
age filled him with envy. And one of them, when he first caught sight of
it, inspired him with a stronger feeling than envy. It was painted white
and was gay with blue and red stripes around the gunwale. In it sat two
boys. One, who sat in the stern, was about Gordon's age; the other, a
little larger than Gordon, was rowing and used the oars like an adept.
In the bow was a flag, and Gordon was staring at it, when it came to him
with a rush that it was a "Yankee" flag. He was conscious for half a
moment that he took some pride in the superiority of the oarsman over
the boys in the other boats. His next thought was that he had a little
Confederate flag in his trunk. He had brought it from home among his
other treasures. He would show his colors and not let the Yankee boys
have all of the honors. So away he put as hard as his legs could carry
him. When he got back to the waterside he hired a boat from among those
lying tied at the stairs, and soon had his little flag rigged up, when,
taking his seat, he picked up the oars and pushed off. It was rather
more difficult than it had looked. The oars would not go together.
However, after a little he was able to move slowly, and was quite elated
at his success when he found himself out on the lake. Just then he
heard a shout:

"Take down that flag!"

Gordon wished to turn his boat and look around, but could not do so.
However, one of the oars came out of the water, and as the boat veered a
little he saw the boys in the white boat with the Union flag bearing
down on him.

The oarsman was rowing with strong, swift strokes even while he looked
over his shoulder, and the boat was shooting along as straight as an
arrow, with the clear water curling about its prow. Gordon wished for a
moment that he had not been so daring, but the next second his
fighting--blood was up, as the other boy called imperiously:

"Strike that flag!"

Gordon could see his face now, for he was almost on him. It was round
and sunburnt, and the eyes were blue and clear and flashing with
excitement. His companion, who was cheering him on, was Ferdy
Wickersham.

"Strike that flag, I say," called the oarsman.

"I won't. Who are you? Strike your own flag."

"I am Norman Wentworth. That's who I am, and if you don't take that flag
down I will take it down for you, you little nigger-driving rebel."

Gordon Keith was not a boy to neglect the amenities of the occasion.

"Come and try it then, will you, you nigger-stealing Yankees!" he
called. "I will fight both of you." And he settled himself for defence.

"Well, I will," cried his assailant. "Drop the tiller, Ferdy, and sit
tight. I will fight fair." Then to Gordon again: "I have given you fair
warning, and I will have that flag or sink you."

Gordon's answer was to drop one oar as useless, seize the other, and
steadying himself as well as he could, raise it aloft as a weapon.

"I will kill you if you try it," he said between clinched teeth.

However, the boy rowing the other boat was not to be frightened. He
gave a vigorous stroke of his oars that sent his boat straight into the
side of Gordon's boat.

The shock of the two boats coming together pitched Gordon to his knees,
and came near flinging him into the water; but he was up again in a
second, and raising his oar, dealt a vicious blow with it, not at the
boy in the boat, but at the flag in the bow of the boat. The
unsteadiness of his footing, however, caused him to miss his aim, and he
only splintered his oar into fragments.

"Hit him with the oar, Norman," called the boy in the stern. "Knock him
out of the boat."

The other boy made no answer, but with a quick turn of his wrist twisted
his boat out of its direct course and sent it skimming off to one side.
Then dropping one oar, he caught up the other with both hands, and with
a rapid, dexterous swing swept a cataract of water in Gordon's face,
drenching him, blinding him, and filling his eyes, mouth, and ears with
the unexpected deluge. Gordon gasped and sputtered, and before he could
recover from this unlooked-for flank movement, another turn of the wrist
brought the attacking boat sharp across his bow, and, with a shout of
triumph, Norman wrenched the defiant flag out of its socket.

Gordon had no time for thought. He had time only to act. With a cry,
half of rage, half of defiance, he sprang up on the point of the bow of
his boat, and with outstretched arms launched himself at the bow of the
other, where the captor had flung the flag, to use both oars. His boat
slipped from under his feet, and he fell short, but caught the gunwale
of the other, and dragged himself up to it. He held just long enough to
clutch both flags, and the next second, with a faint cheer, he rolled
off and sank with a splash in the water.

Norman Wentworth had risen, and with blazing eyes, his oar uplifted, was
scrambling toward the bow to repel the boarder, when the latter
disappeared. Norman gazed at the spot with staring eyes. The next second
he took in what was happening, and, with an exclamation of horror, he
suddenly dived overboard. When he came to the top, he was pulling the
other boy up with him.

Though Norman was a good swimmer, there was a moment of extreme danger;
for, half unconscious, Gordon pulled him under once. But fortunately
Norman kept his head, and with a supreme effort breaking the drowning
boy's hold, he drew him to the top once more. Fortunately for both, a
man seeing the trouble had brought his boat to the spot, and, just as
Norman rose to the surface with his burden, he reached out and, seizing
him, dragged both him and the now unconscious Gordon aboard his boat.

It was some days before Gordon was able to sit up, and meanwhile he
learned that his assailant and rescuer had been every day to make
inquiry about him, and his father, Mr. Wentworth, had written to
Gordon's father and expressed his concern at the accident.

"It is a strange fate," he wrote, "that should after all these years
have arrayed us against each other thus, and have brought our boys face
to face in a foreign land. I hear that your boy behaved with the courage
which I knew your son would show."

General Keith, in turn, expressed his gratitude for the promptness and
efficiency with which the other's son had apprehended the danger and
met it.

"My son owes his life to him," he said. "As to the flag, it was the
fortune of war," and he thought the incident did credit to both
combatants. He "only wished," he said, "that in every fight over a flag
there were the same ability to restore to life those who defended it."

Gordon, however, could not participate in this philosophic view of his
father's. He had lost his flag; he had been defeated in the battle. And
he owed his life to his victorious enemy.

He was but a boy, and his defeat was gall and wormwood to him. It was
but very little sweetened by the knowledge that his victor had come to
ask after him.

He was lying in bed one afternoon, lonely and homesick and sad. His
father was away, and no one had been in to him for, perhaps, an hour.
The shrill voices of children and the shouts of boys floated in at the
open window from somewhere afar off. He was not able to join them. It
depressed him, and he began to pine for the old plantation--a habit that
followed him through life in the hours of depression.

Suddenly there was a murmur of voices outside the room, and after a few
moments the door softly opened, and a lady put her head in and looked at
him. She was a stranger and was dressed in a travelling-suit. Gordon
gazed at her without moving or uttering a sound. She came in and closed
the door gently behind her, and then walked softly over to the side of
the bed and looked down at him with kind eyes. She was not exactly
pretty, but to Gordon she appeared beautiful, and he knew that she was a
friend. Suddenly she dropped down on her knees beside him and put her
arm over him caressingly.

"I am Norman's mother," she said, "and I have come to look after you and
to take you home with me if they will let me have you." She stooped over
and kissed him.

The boy put up his pinched face and kissed her.

"I will go," he said in his weak voice.

She kissed him again, and smiled down at him with moist eyes, and talked
to him in tender tones, stroking his hair and telling him of Norman's
sorrow for the trouble, of her own unhappiness, and of her regret that
the doctors would not let him be moved. When she left, it was with a
promise that she would come back again and see him; and Gordon knew that
he had a friend in England of his own kind, and a truth somehow had
slipped into his heart which set at odds many opinions which he had
thought principles. He had never thought to feel kindly toward a Yankee.

When Gordon was able to be out again, his father wished him to go and
thank his former foe who had rescued him. But it was too hard an ordeal
for the boy to face. Even the memory of Mrs. Wentworth could not
reconcile him to this.

"You don't know how hard it is, father," he said, with that assurance
with which boyhood always draws a line between itself and the rest of
the world. "Did you ever have to ask pardon of one who had fought you?"

General Keith's face wore a singular expression. Suddenly he felt a
curious sensation in a spot in his right side, and he was standing in a
dewy glade in a piece of woodland on a Spring morning, looking at a
slim, serious young man standing very straight and still a few paces
off, with a pistol gripped in his hand, and, queerly enough, his name,
too, was Norman Wentworth. But he was not thinking of him. He was
thinking of a tall girl with calm blue eyes, whom he had walked with the
day before, and who had sent him away dazed and half maddened. Then some
one a little to one side spoke a few words and began to count, "One,
two--" There was a simultaneous report of two pistols, two little puffs
of smoke, and when the smoke had cleared away, the other man with the
pistol was sinking slowly to the ground, and he himself was tottering
into the arms of the man nearest him.

He came back to the present with a gasp.

"My son," he said gravely, "I once was called on and failed. I have
regretted it all my life, though happily the consequences were not as
fatal as I had at one time apprehended. If every generation did not
improve on the follies and weaknesses of those that have gone before,
there would be no advance in the world. I want you to be wiser and
stronger than I."

Gordon's chance of revenge came sooner than he expected. Not long after
he got out of doors again he was on his way down to the lake, where he
was learning to swim, when a number of boys whom he passed began to hoot
at him. In their midst was Ferdy Wickersham, the boy who had crossed the
ocean with him. He was setting the others on. The cry that came to
Gordon was: "Nigger-driver! Nigger-driver!" Sometimes Fortune, Chance,
or whatever may be the deity of fortuitous occurrence, places our
weapons right to hand. What would David have done had there not been a
stony brook between him and Goliath that day? Just as Gordon with
burning face turned to defy his deriders, a pile of small stones lay at
his feet. It looked like Providence. He could not row a boat, but he
could fling a stone like young David. In a moment he was sending stones
up the hill with such rapidity that the group above him were thrown into
confusion.