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Gordon Keith written by Thomas Nelson Page

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Then Gordon fell into an error of more noted generals. Seizing a supply
of missiles, he charged straight up the hill. Though the group had
broken at the sudden assault, by the time he reached the hill-top they
had rallied, and while he was out of ammunition they made a charge on
him. Wheeling, he went down the hill like the wind, while his pursuers
broke after him with shouts of triumph. As he reached the stone-pile he
turned and made a stand, which brought them to a momentary stop. Just
then a shout arose below him. Gordon turned to see rushing up the hill
toward him Norman Wentworth. He was picking up stones as he ran. Gordon
heard him call out something, but he did not wait for his words. Here
was his arch-enemy, his conqueror, and here, at least, he was his equal.
Without wasting further time with those above him, Gordon sprang toward
his new assailant, and steadying himself, hurled his heaviest stone.
Fortunately, Norman Wentworth had been reared in the country and knew
how to dodge as well as to throw a stone, or his days might have ended
then and there.

"Hold on! don't throw!" he shouted "I am coming to help you," and,
without waiting, he sent a stone far over Gordon's head at the party on
the height above. Gordon, who was poising himself for another shot,
paused amazed in the midst of his aim, open-mouthed and wide-eyed.

"Come on," cried Norman. "You and I together can lick them. I know the
way, and we will get above them." So saying, he dashed down a side
alley, Gordon close at his heels, and, by making a turn, they came out a
few minutes later on the hill above their enemies, who were rejoicing in
their easy victory, and, catching them unprepared, routed them and
scattered them in an instant.

Ferdy Wickersham, finding himself defeated, promptly surrendered and
offered to enlist on their side. Norman, however, had no idea of letting
him off so easy.

"I am going to take you prisoner, but not until I have given you a good
kicking. You know better than to take sides against an American."

"He is a rebel," said Ferdy.

"He is an American," said Norman. And he forthwith proceeded to make
good his word, and to do it in such honest style that Ferdy, after first
taking it as a joke, got angry and ran away howling.

Gordon was doubtful as to the wisdom of this severity.

"He will tell," he said.

"Let him," said Norman, contemptuously. "He knows what he will get if he
does. I was at school with him last year, and I am going to school with
him again. I will teach him to fight with any one else against an
American!"

This episode made the two boys closer allies than they would have been
in a year of peace.

General Keith, finding his mission fruitless, asked leave to return home
immediately, so that Gordon saw little more of his former foe and
new ally.

A few days before their departure, Gordon, passing along a road, came on
a group of three persons, two children and a French governess with
much-frizzled hair, very black eyes, and a small waist. One of the
children was a very little girl, richly dressed in a white frock with a
blue sash that almost covered it, with big brown eyes and yellow
ringlets; the other child was a ragged girl several years older, with
tangled hair, gray eyes, and the ruddy, chubby cheeks so often seen in
children of her class. The governess was in a state of great
excitement, and was talking French so fast that it was a wonder any
tongue could utter the words. The little girl of the fine frock and
brown eyes was clutching to her bosom with a defiant air a large doll
which the governess was trying to get from her, while the other child
stood by, looking first toward one of them and then toward the other,
with an expression divided between timidity and eagerness. A big picture
of a ballet-dancer with a gay frock and red shoes in a flaring
advertisement on a sign-board had something to do with the trouble. Now
the girl drew nearer to the other child and danced a few steps, holding
out her hand; now she cast a look over her shoulder down the hill, as if
to see that her retreat were not cut off.

"_Mais, c'est a moi_--it's _my_ doll. I _will_ have it," insisted the
little girl, backing away and holding it firmly; at which the governess
began again almost tearing her hair in her desperation, though she ended
by giving it a pat to see that it was all right.

The approach of Gordon drew her attention to him.

"Oh," she exclaimed in desperation, "_c'est epouvantable_--it ees
terr-e-ble! Dese young ladie weel give de doll to dat meeseerable
creature!"

"She is not a 'meeseerable creature'!" insisted the little girl, mocking
her, her brown eyes flashing. "She danced for me, and I will give it to
her--I like her."

"Oh, _ciel_! What shall I do! Madame weel abuse me--weel keel me!"

"Mamma will not mind; it is _my_ doll. Aunt Abby gave it to me. I can
get a plenty more, and I will give it to her," insisted the little girl
again. Then suddenly, gaining more courage, she turned quickly, and,
before the governess could stop her, thrust the doll into the other
child's arms.

"Here, you _shall_ have it."

The governess, with a cry of rage, made a spring for the child, but too
late: the grimy little hands had clutched the doll, and turning without
a word of thanks, the little creature sped down the road like a
frightened animal, her ragged frock fluttering behind her.

"Why, she did not say 'Thank you'!" exclaimed the child, in a
disappointed tone, looking ruefully after the retreating figure.

The governess broke out on her vehemently in French, very comically
mingling her upbraidings of her charge, her abuse of the little girl,
and her apprehension of "Madame."

"Never mind; she does not know any better," said Gordon.

The child's face brightened at this friendly encouragement.

"She is a nasty little creature! You shall not play with her," cried the
governess, angrily.

"She is not nasty! I like her, and I will play with her," declared the
child, defiantly.

"What is your name?" asked the boy, much amused by such sturdiness in so
small a tot.

"Lois Huntington. What is your name?" She looked up at him with her big
brown eyes.

"Gordon Keith."

"How do you do, Gordon Keith?" She held out her hand.

"How do you do, Lois Huntington?"

She shook hands with him solemnly.

A day or two later, as Gordon was passing through one of the streets in
the lower part of the village, he came upon a hurdy-gurdy playing a
livelier tune than most of them usually gave. A crowd of children had
gathered in the street. Among them was a little barelegged girl who,
inspired by the music, was dancing and keeping perfect time as she
tripped back and forth, pirouetted and swayed on the tips of her bare
toes, flirting her little ragged frock, and kicking with quite the air
of a ballet-dancer. She divided the honors with the dismal Savoyard, who
ground away at his organ, and she brought a flicker of admiration into
his bronzed and grimy face, for he played for her the same tune over and
over, encouraging her with nods and bravas. She was enjoying her triumph
quite as much as any prima donna who ever tripped it on a more
ambitious stage.

Gordon recognized in the little dancer the tangled-haired child who had
run away with the little girl's doll a few days before.



CHAPTER II

GENERAL KEITH BECOMES AN OVERSEER

When the war closed, though it was not recognized at first, the old
civilization of the South passed away. Fragments of the structure that
had once risen so fair and imposing still stood for a time, even after
the foundations were undermined: a bastion here, a tower there; but in
time they followed the general overthrow, and crumbled gradually to
their fall, leaving only ruins and decay.

For a time it was hoped that the dilapidation might be repaired and the
old life be lived again. General Keith, like many others, though broken
and wasted in body, undertook to rebuild with borrowed money, but with
disastrous results. The conditions were all against him.

Three or four years' effort to repair his fallen fortunes only plunged
him deeper in debt. General Keith, like most of his neighbors and
friends, found himself facing the fact that he was hopelessly insolvent.
As soon as he saw he could not pay his debts he stopped spending and
notified his creditors.

"I see nothing ahead of me," he wrote, "but greater ruin. I am like a
horse in a quicksand: every effort I make but sinks me deeper."

Some of his neighbors took the benefit of the bankrupt-law which was
passed to give relief. General Keith was urged to do likewise, but
he declined.

"Though I cannot pay my debts," he said, "the least I can do is to
acknowledge that I owe them. I am unwilling to appear, even for a short
time, to be denying what I know to be a fact."

He gave up everything that he owned, reserving nothing that would bring
in money.

When Elphinstone was sold, it brought less than the debts on it. The old
plate, with the Keith coat-of-arms on it, from which generations of
guests had been served, and which old Richard, the butler, had saved
during the war, went for its weight in silver. The library had been
pillaged until little of it remained. The old Keith pictures, some of
them by the best artists, which had been boxed and stored elsewhere
until after the war, now went to the purchaser of the place for less
than the price of their frames. Among them was the portrait of the man
in the steel coat and hat, who had the General's face.

What General Keith felt during this transition no one, perhaps, ever
knew; certainly his son did not know it, and did not dream of it until
later in life.

It was, however, not only in the South that fortunes were lost by the
war. As vast as was the increase of riches at the North among those who
stayed at home, it did not extend to those who took the field. Among
these was a young officer named Huntington, from Brookford, a little
town on the sunny slope that stretches eastwardly from the Alleghanies
to the Delaware. Captain Huntington, having entered the army on the
outbreak of the war, like Colonel Keith rose to the rank of general,
and, like General Keith, received a wound that incapacitated him for
service. His wife was a Southern woman, and had died abroad, just at the
close of the war, leaving him a little girl, who was the idol of his
heart. He was interested in the South, and came South to try and
recuperate from the effects of his wound and of exposure during the war.

The handsomest place in the neighborhood of Elphinstone was "Rosedale,"
the family-seat of the Berkeleys. Mr. Berkeley had been killed in the
war, and the plantation went, like Elphinstone and most of the other
old estates, for debt. And General Huntington purchased it.

As soon as General Keith heard of his arrival in the neighborhood, he
called on him and invited him to stay at his house until Rosedale should
be refurnished and made comfortable again. The two gentlemen soon became
great friends, and though many of the neighbors looked askance at the
Federal officer and grumbled at his possessing the old family-seat of
the Berkeleys, the urbanity and real kindness of the dignified,
soldierly young officer soon made his way easier and won him respect if
not friendship. When a man had been a general at the age of twenty-six,
it meant that he was a man, and when General Keith pronounced that he
was a gentleman, it meant that he was a gentleman. Thus reasoned the
neighbors.

His only child was a pretty little girl of five or six years, with great
brown eyes, yellow curls, and a rosebud face that dimpled adorably when
she laughed. When Gordon saw her he recognized her instantly as the tot
who had given her doll to the little dancer two years before. Her eyes
could not be mistaken. She used to drive about in the tiniest of village
carts, drawn by the most Liliputian of ponies, and Gordon used to call
her "Cindy,"--short for Cinderella,--which amused and pleased her. She
in turn called him her sweetheart; tyrannized over him, and finally
declared that she was going to marry him.

"Why, you are not going to have a rebel for a sweetheart?" said her
father.

"Yes, I am. I am going to make him Union," she declared gravely.

"Well, that is a good way. I fancy that is about the best system of
Reconstruction that has yet been tried."

He told the story to General Keith, who rode over very soon afterwards
to see the child, and thenceforth called her his fairy daughter.

One day she had a tiff with Gordon, and she announced to him that she
was not going to kiss him any more.

"Oh, yes, you are," said he, teasing her.

"I am not." Her eyes flashed. And although he often teased her
afterwards, and used to draw a circle on his cheek which, he said, was
her especial reservation, she kept her word, even in spite of the
temptation which he held out to her to take her to ride if she
would relent.

One Spring General Huntington's cough suddenly increased, and he began
to go downhill so rapidly as to cause much uneasiness to his friends.
General Keith urged him to go up to a little place on the side of the
mountains which had been quite a health-resort before the war.

"Ridgely is one of the most salubrious places I know for such trouble as
yours. And Dr. Theophilus Balsam is one of the best doctors in the
State. He was my regimental surgeon during the war. He is a Northern man
who came South before the war. I think he had an unfortunate
love-affair."

"There is no place for such trouble as mine," said the younger man,
gravely. "That bullet went a little too deep." Still, he went
to Ridgely.

Under the charge of Dr. Balsam the young officer for a time revived, and
for a year or two appeared on the way to recovery. Then suddenly his old
trouble returned, and he went down as if shot. The name Huntington had
strong association for the old physician; for it was a Huntington that
Lois Brooke, the younger sister of Abigail Brooke, his old sweetheart,
had married, and Abigail Brooke's refusal to marry him had sent him
South. The Doctor discovered early in his acquaintance with the young
officer that he was Abigail Brooke's nephew. He, however, made no
reference to his former relation to his patient's people.

Division bitterer than that war in which he had fought lay between them,
the division that had embittered his life and made him an exile from his
people. But the little girl with her great, serious eyes became the old
physician's idol and tyrant, and how he worked over her father! Even in
those last hours when the end had unexpectedly appeared, and General
Huntington was making his last arrangements with the same courage which
had made him a noted officer when hardly more than a boy, the Doctor
kept his counsel almost to the end.

"How long have I to live, Doctor?" panted the dying man, when he rallied
somewhat from the attack that had struck him down.

"Not very long."

"Then I wish you to send for General Keith. I wish him to take my child
to my aunt, Miss Abigail Brooke."

"I will attend to it" said the Doctor.

"So long as she lives she will take care of her. But she is now an old
woman, and when she dies, God knows what will become of her."

"I will look after her as long as I live," said the Doctor.

"Thank you, Doctor." There was a pause. "She is a saint." His mind had
gone back to his early life. To this Dr. Balsam made no reply. "She has
had a sad life. She was crossed in love but instead of souring, it
sweetened her."

"I was the man," said the Doctor, quietly. "I will look after your
child."

"You were! I never knew his name. She never married."

He gave a few directions, and presently said: "My little girl? I wish to
see her. It cannot hurt me?"

"No, it will not hurt you," said the Doctor, quietly.

The child was brought, and the dying man's eyes lit up as they rested on
her pink face and brown eyes filled with a vague wonder.

"You must remember papa."

She stood on tiptoe and, leaning over, kissed him.

"And you must go to Aunt Abby when I have gone."

"I will take Gordon Keith with me," said the child.

The ghost of a smile flickered about the dying man's eyes. Then came a
fit of coughing, and when it had passed, his head, after a few gasps,
sank back.

At a word from the Doctor, an attendant took the child out of the room.

That evening the old Doctor saw that the little girl was put to bed, and
that night he sat up alone with the body. There were many others to
relieve him, but he declined them and kept his vigil alone.

What memories were with him; what thoughts attended him through those
lonely hours, who can tell!

General Keith went immediately to Ridgely on hearing of General
Huntington's death. He took Gordon with him, thinking that he would help
to comfort the little orphaned girl. The boy had no idea how well he was
to know the watering-place in after years. The child fell to his care
and clung to him, finally going to sleep in his arms. While the
arrangements were being made, they moved for a day or two over to Squire
Rawson's, the leading man of the Ridge region, where the squire's
granddaughter, a fresh-faced girl of ten or twelve years, took care of
the little orphan and kept her interested.

The burial, in accordance with a wish expressed by General Huntington,
took place in a corner of the little burying-ground at Ridgely, which
lay on a sunny knoll overlooking the long slope to the northeastward.
The child walked after the bier, holding fast to Gordon's hand, while
Dr. Balsam and General Keith walked after them.

As soon as General Keith could hear from Miss Brooke he took the child
to her; but to the last Lois said that she wanted Gordon to come
with her.

Soon afterwards it appeared that General Huntington's property had
nearly all gone. His plantation was sold.

Several times Lois wrote Gordon quaint little letters scrawled in a
childish hand, asking about the calves and pigeons and chickens that had
been her friends. But after a while the letters ceased to come.

When Elphinstone was sold, the purchaser was a certain Mr. Aaron
Wickersham of New York, the father of Ferdy Wickersham, with whom Gordon
had had the rock-battle. Mr. Wickersham was a stout and good-humored
man of fifty, with a head like a billiard-bail, and a face that was both
shrewd and kindly. He had, during the war, made a fortune out of
contracts, and was now preparing to increase it in the South, where the
mountain region, filled with coal and iron, lay virgin for the first
comer with sufficient courage and astuteness to take it. He found the
new legislature of the State an instrument well fitted to his hands. It
could be manipulated.

The Wickershams had lately moved into a large new house on Fifth Avenue,
where Fashion was climbing the hill toward the Park in the effort to get
above Murray Hill, and possibly to look down upon the substantial and
somewhat prosaic mansions below, whose doors it had sometimes been found
difficult to enter. Mrs. Wickersham was from Brookford, the same town
from which the Huntingtons came, and, when a young and handsome girl,
having social ambitions, had married Aaron Wickersham when he was but a
clerk in the banking-house of Wentworth & Son. And, be it said, she had
aided him materially in advancing his fortunes. She was a handsome
woman, and her social ambitions had grown. Ferdy was her only child, and
was the joy and pride of her heart. Her ambition centred in him. He
should be the leader of the town, as she felt his beauty and his
smartness entitled him to be. It was with this aim that she induced her
husband to build the fine new house on the avenue. She knew the value of
a large and handsome mansion in a fashionable quarter. Aaron Wickersham
knew little of fashion; but he knew the power of money, and he had
absolute confidence in his wife's ability. He would furnish the means
and leave the rest to her. The house was built and furnished by
contract, and Mrs. Wickersham took pride in the fact that it was much
finer than the Wentworth mansion on Washington Square, and more
expensive than the house of the Yorkes, which was one of the big houses
on the avenue, and had been the talk of the town when it was built ten
years before. Will Stirling, one of the wags, said that it was a good
thing that Mr. Wickersham did not take the contract for himself.

Mr. Wickersham, having spent a considerable sum in planning and
preparing his Southern enterprise, and having obtained a charter from
the legislature of the State that gave him power to do almost anything
he wished, suddenly found himself balked by the fact that the people in
the mountain region which he wished to reach with his road were so
bitterly opposed to any such innovation that it jeopardized his entire
scheme. From the richest man in that section, an old cattle-dealer and
lumberman named Rawson, to Tim Gilsey, who drove the stage from Eden to
Gumbolt Gap, they were all opposed to any "newfangled" notions, and they
regarded everything that came from carpet-baggers as "robbery and
corruption."

He learned that "the most influential man down there" was General Keith,
and that his place was for sale.

"I can reach him," said Mr. Wickersham, with a gleam in his eye. "I will
have a rope around his neck that will lead him." So he bought the place.

Fortunately, perhaps, for Mr. Wickersham, he hinted something of his
intentions to his counsel, a shrewd old lawyer of the State, who thought
that he could arrange the matter better than Mr. Wickersham could.

"You don't know how to deal with these old fellows," he said.

"I know men," said Mr. Wickersham, "and I know that when I have a hold
on a man--"

"You don't know General Keith," said Mr. Bagge. The glint in his eye
impressed the other and he yielded.

So Mr. Wickersham bought the Keith plantation and left it to Greene
Bagge, Esq., to manage the business. Mr. Bagge wrote General Keith a
diplomatic letter eulogistic of the South and of Mr. Wickersham's
interest in it, and invited the General to remain on the place for the
present as its manager.

General Keith sat for some time over that letter, his face as grave as
it had ever been in battle. What swept before his mental vision who
shall know? The history of two hundred years bound the Keiths to
Elphinstone. They had carved it from the forest and had held it against
the Indian. From there they had gone to the highest office of the State.
Love, marriage, death--all the sanctities of life--were bound up with
it. He talked it over with Gordon.

Gordon's face fell.

"Why, father, you will be nothing but an overseer."

General Keith smiled. Gordon remembered long afterwards, with shame for
his Speech, how wistful that smile was.

"Yes; I shall be something more than that. I shall be, at least, a
faithful one. I wish I could be as successful a one."

He wrote saying that, as he had failed for himself, he did not see how
he could succeed for another. But upon receiving a very flattering
reassurance, he accepted the offer. Thus, the General remained as an
employe on the estate which had been renowned for generations as the
home of the Keiths. And as agent for the new owner he farmed the place
with far greater energy and success than he had ever shown on his own
account. It was a bitter cup for Gordon to have his father act as an
"overseer"; but if it contained any bitterness for General Keith, he
never gave the least evidence of it, nor betrayed his feeling by the
slightest sign.

When Mr. Wickersham visited his new estate he admitted that Mr. Bagge
knew better than he how to deal with General Keith.

When he was met at the station by a tall, gray-haired gentleman who
looked like something between a general and a churchwarden, he was
inclined to be shy; but when the gentleman grasped his hand, and with a
voice of unmistakable sincerity said he had driven out himself to meet
him, to welcome him among them, he felt at home.

"It is gentlemen like yourself to whom we must look for the preservation
of our civilization," said General Keith, and introduced him personally
to every man he met as, "the gentleman who has bought my old place--not
a 'carpet-bagger,' but a gentleman interested in the development of our
country, sir."

Mr. Wickersham, in fact, was treated with a distinction to which he had
been a stranger during his former visits South. He liked it. He felt
quite like a Southern gentleman, and with one or two Northerners whom he
met held himself a little distantly.

Once or twice the new owner of Elphinstone came down with parties of
friends--"to look at the country." They were interested in developing
it, and had been getting sundry acts passed by the legislature with this
in view. (General Keith's nose always took a slight elevation when the
legislature was mentioned.) General Keith entertained the visitors
precisely as he had done when he was the master, and Mr. Wickersham and
his guests treated him, in the main, as if he were still the master.
General Keith sat at the foot of the table opposite Mr. Wickersham, and
directed the servants, who still called him "Master," and obeyed him
as such.