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About the cover image

Vue de San-Francisco Vista de San-Francisco

Lithographer Isador Laurent Deroy (1797–1886), working in Paris,
produced many images of the United States for French audiences. They
included scenes of the White House and other government buildings in
Washington, D.C.; Wall Street in New York City; and natural wonders
such as Niagara Falls. This lithograph shows early San Francisco on the
eve of the Civil War. As a boomtown created in the chaos of the
California gold rush, San Francisco was probably less tidy than it appears
here. Its inhabitants were certainly more racially diverse, including
Mexicans, African Americans, Hawaiians, Chileans, and other gold
seekers from around the world.

8
9
10
AMERICA’S
HISTORY
VOLUME 1: TO 1877

11
AMERICA’S
HISTORY
CONCISE EDITION
NINTH EDITION

VOLUME 1: TO 1877

Rebecca Edwards
Vassar College

Eric Hinderaker
University of Utah

Robert O. Self
Brown University

James A. Henretta
University of Maryland

12
For Bedford/St. Martin’s
Vice President, Editorial, Macmillan Learning Humanities: Edwin Hill
Program Director for History: Michael Rosenberg
Senior Program Manager for History: William J. Lombardo
History Marketing Manager: Melissa Rodriguez
Director of Content Development: Jane Knetzger
Senior Developmental Editor: Leah Strauss
Senior Content Project Manager: Gregory Erb
Senior Workflow Project Manager: Lisa McDowell
Production Supervisor: Robert Cherry
Media Project Manager: Tess Fletcher
Composition: Jouve
Cartographer: Mapping Specialists, Ltd.
Photo Editor: Sheena Goldstein
Photo Researcher: Naomi Kornhauser
Permissions Editor: Kalina Ingham
Permissions Researcher: Eve Lehmann
Senior Art Director: Anna Palchik
Text Design: Maureen McCutcheon
Cover Design: William Boardman
Cover Art: Vue de San-Francisco Vista de San-Francisco, Library of Congress

Copyright © 2018, 2015, 2012, 2010 by Bedford/St. Martin’s.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except as may be expressly permitted by
the applicable copyright statutes or in writing by the Publisher.

2 1 0 9 8 7
f e d c b a

For information, write: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 75 Arlington Street, Boston, MA

02116

ISBN: 978-1-319-27061-2 (mobi)

Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments and copyrights appear on the same page as the text and art
selections they cover; these acknowledgments and copyrights constitute an

13
extension of the copyright page.

14
Preface
Why This Book This Way
History classrooms present a unique dilemma. How do we offer our
students a basic understanding of key events and facts while inviting them
to see the past not as a rote list of names and dates but as the fascinating,
conflicted prelude to their lives today? How do we teach our students to
think like historians? As scholars and teachers who go into the classroom
every day, the authors of America’s History, Concise Edition know these
challenges well. We have composed the ninth edition to help instructors
meet them. America’s History has long been known for its breadth,
balance, and ability to explain to students not just what happened, but why.
The latest edition of the Concise Edition preserves and builds on those
strengths. The Concise Edition provides our signature approach to history
in a smaller, more affordable trim size. Featuring the full narrative of the
parent text and select features, images, maps, and pedagogical tools, the
Concise Edition continues to incorporate the latest and best scholarship in
the field in an accessible, student-friendly manner.
The foundation of our approach lies in a commitment to an integrated
history. America’s History, Concise Edition combines traditional “top
down” narratives of political and economic history with “bottom up”
narratives of the lived experiences of ordinary people. Our goal is to help
students achieve a richer understanding of politics, diplomacy, war,
economics, intellectual and cultural life, and gender, class, and race
relations by exploring how developments in all these areas were
interconnected. Our analysis is fueled by a passion for exploring big,
consequential questions. How did a colonial slave society settled by people
from four continents become a pluralist democracy? How have struggles
for liberty, equality, and justice informed the American experience? To
whom has the “American Dream” appealed—and who has achieved it, or
experienced disillusionment or exclusion? How has the experience of war
shaped American politics, society, and culture? Questions like these help
students understand what’s at stake as we study the past. In America’s
History, Concise Edition we provide an integrated historical approach and
bring a dedication to why history matters to bear on the full sweep of

15
America’s past.
One of the most exciting developments in this edition is the attention
we have devoted to fresh interpretations of the colonial, early national, and
antebellum periods. Since his arrival as a new author on the eighth edition,
Eric Hinderaker, an expert in Native American and early American
history, has invigorated the chapters on Native, colonial European, and
African societies and the revolutionary Atlantic world of the eighteenth
century, bringing them in line with the most current historical scholarship.
Rebecca Edwards, an expert in women’s and gender history and
nineteenth-century electoral politics, has done the same for the chapters
covering the antebellum decades and the “long Progressive Era” of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These authors have integrated
coverage of slavery and the South’s economy and society into all the pre–
Civil War chapters. They have also consolidated antebellum coverage,
enabling teachers to move more efficiently through this material, and have
updated coverage of the Civil War. Robert Self, whose work explores the
relationship between urban and suburban politics, social movements, and
the state, has updated the twentieth and twenty-first-century chapters, with
special attention to Chapter 30, which chronicles the extraordinary events
of the most recent decades. Together, we strive to ensure that energy and
creativity, as well as our wide experience in the study of history, infuse
every page that follows.
In this edition, we bid a fond and deeply appreciative adieu to James
Henretta, one of the original authors of America’s History and its ballast
and intellectual leader for eight editions. Professor Emeritus at the
University of Maryland, and soon to be an emeritus author, James will use
his retirement to pursue a variety of personal and scholarly endeavors. His
influence on this book, and his name on the Title Page, will continue for
some time, but he will no longer participate in our cycles of revision. We
wish him the best and thank him for sustaining America’s History for so
many years and for his commitment to the highest standards of scholarship
and prose.
In our contemporary digital world, facts and data are everywhere.
What students crave is analysis. As it has since its inception, America’s
History provides students with a comprehensive explanation and
interpretation of events, a guide to why history unfolded as it did and a
roadmap for understanding the world in which we live. The core of a
textbook is its narrative, and we have endeavored to make ours clear,
accessible, and lively. In it, we focus not only on the marvelous diversity
of peoples who came to call themselves Americans but also on the

16
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institutions that have forged a common national identity. More than ever,
we daily confront the collision of our past with the demands of the future
and the shrinking distance between Americans and others around the
globe. To help students meet these challenges, we call attention to
connections with the histories of Canada, Latin America, Europe, Africa,
and Asia, drawing links between events in the United States and those
elsewhere.
Of course, the contents of this book are only helpful if students read
and assimilate the material before coming to class. So that students will
come to class prepared, they can receive access to LearningCurve—an
adaptive, online learning tool that helps them master content—when they
purchase the LaunchPad e-book (which is free when bundled with the
print book). To learn more about the benefits of LearningCurve and
LaunchPad, see the “Versions and Supplements” section on page xiv.

A Nine-Part Framework Highlights Key

Developments
One of the greatest strengths of America’s History, Concise Edition is its
part structure, which helps students identify the key forces and major
developments that shaped each era. A four-page part opener introduces
each of the nine parts, using analysis, striking images, and a detailed
thematic timeline to orient students to major developments and themes of
the period. Thematic Understanding questions ask students to consider
periodization and make connections among chapters. By organizing U.S.
history into nine distinct periods, rather than just thirty successive
chapters, we encourage students to trace changes and continuities over
time and to grasp connections between political, economic, social, and
cultural events.
In this edition, as in earlier ones, we have refined the part structure to
reflect the most up-to-date scholarship. Part 4 now focuses more tightly on
the history of the emerging republic, ending with the U.S.-Mexico War
rather than in 1860. Part 5 offers expanded coverage of immigration, while
Part 6 gives more emphasis to economic and intellectual debates during
the era of industrialization. Part 9 extends to the end of Obama’s
presidency and the emergence of Donald Trump, linking political
upheavals in this era to earlier events and themes.
Part 1, “Transformations of North America, 1491–1700,”
highlights the diversity and complexity of Native Americans prior to
European contact, examines the transformative impact of European

17
intrusions and the Columbian Exchange, and emphasizes the experimental
quality of colonial ventures. Part 2, “British North America and the
Atlantic World, 1607–1763,” explains the diversification of British North
America and the rise of the British Atlantic world and emphasizes the
importance of contact between colonists and Native Americans and
imperial rivalries among European powers. Part 3, “Revolution and
Republican Culture, 1754–1800,” traces the rise of colonial protest
against British imperial reform, outlines the ways that the American
Revolution challenged the social order, and explores the processes of
conquest, competition, and consolidation that followed it.
Part 4, “Overlapping Revolutions, 1800–1848,” traces the
transformation of the economy, society, and culture of the new nation; the
creation of a democratic polity; and growing sectional divisions. Part 5,
“Consolidating a Continental Union, 1844–1877,” covers the conflicts
generated by America’s empire building in the West, including sectional
political struggles that led to the Civil War and national consolidation of
power during and after Reconstruction. Part 6, “Industrializing
America: Upheavals and Experiments, 1877–1917,” examines the
transformations brought about by the rise of corporations and a
powerhouse industrial economy; immigration and a diverse, urbanizing
society; and movements for progressive reform.
Part 7, “Domestic and Global Challenges, 1890–1945,” explores
America’s rise to world power, the cultural transformations and political
conflicts of the 1920s, the Great Depression, and the creation of the New
Deal welfare state. Part 8, “The Modern State and the Age of
Liberalism, 1945–1980,” addresses the postwar period, including
America’s new global leadership role during the Cold War; the expansion
of federal responsibility during a new “age of liberalism”; and the growth
of mass consumption and the middle class. Finally, Part 9,
“Globalization and the End of the American Century, 1980 to the
Present,” discusses the conservative political ascendancy of the 1980s; the
end of the Cold War and rising conflict in the Middle East; and
globalization and increasing social inequality.

Helping Students Work with Primary and Secondary

Sources
America’s History has long emphasized primary sources. In addition to
weaving lively quotations throughout the narrative, we offer students
substantial excerpts from historical documents—letters, diaries,

18
autobiographies, public testimony, and more—and numerous figures that
give students practice working with data. These documents allow students
to experience the past through the words and perspectives of those who
lived it, to understand how historians make sense of the past using data,
and to gain skill in interpreting historical evidence.
To sharpen the ability of students to think historically, and to expose
them to diverse historical views, we have added a new feature in this
edition, called Interpretations. The new Interpretations feature brings
historical argumentation directly into each chapter. Students read short,
accessible passages from two scholarly works of history that offer different
interpretations of the same event or period. By examining the passages
side by side, and responding to the questions we pose, students learn how
historians interpret evidence, weigh facts, and arrive at their conclusions.
This feature highlights how history is a way of thinking and analyzing,
rather than an inert set of facts.
Each of the thirty chapters of America’s History, Concise Edition
contains an Interpretations feature in addition to two primary source–
based features, continued from the eighth edition:
The America in Global Context feature, developed for the previous
edition, uses primary sources and data to situate U.S. history in a global
context while giving students practice in comparison and data analysis.
These features appear in every chapter on topics as diverse as the fight for
women’s rights in France and the United States, an examination of labor
laws after emancipation in Haiti and the United States, the loss of human
life in World War I, the global protests of 1968, and an analysis of the
worldwide economic malaise of the 1970s.
We are excited to retain and reinvigorate a dynamic feature to aid you
in teaching historical thinking skills that we developed for the eighth
edition. A Thinking Like a Historian feature in every chapter includes
five to eight brief primary sources organized around a central theme, such
as “Beyond the Proclamation Line,” “Making Modern Presidents,” and
“The Suburban Landscape of Cold War America.” Students are asked to
analyze the documents and complete a Putting It All Together assignment
that asks them to synthesize and use the evidence to create an argument.
Those using LaunchPad will have access to an additional primary
source feature. Analyzing Voices, a two-page feature in each chapter,
helps students learn to think critically by comparing primary source texts
written or spoken from two or more perspectives. New topics include
“Susanna Martin, Accused Witch,” “Native Americans and European
Empires,” “To Secede or Not to Secede?” “The Omaha Platform,” “Race

19
and Geography in the Civil Rights Era,” and “The Toll of War,” about the
Vietnam War.
Because we understand how important primary sources are to the study
of history, we are also pleased to offer for free, when packaged, the
companion reader, Sources for America’s History, featuring a wealth of
additional documents.
As in past editions, an outstanding visual program engages students’
attention and gives them practice in working with visual sources. The ninth
edition features over one hundred and fifty paintings, cartoons,
illustrations, photographs, and charts, most of them in full color and more
than a quarter new to this edition. Informative captions set the illustrations
in context and provide students with background for making their own
analysis of the images in the book. Keenly aware that students lack
geographic literacy, we have included dozens of maps that show major
developments in the narrative, each with a caption to help students
interpret what they see.
Taken together, these documents, figures, maps, and illustrations
provide instructors with a trove of teaching materials, so that America’s
History, Concise Edition offers not only a compelling narrative, but also—
right in the text—the rich documentary materials that instructors need to
bring the past alive and introduce students to historical analysis.

Helping Students Understand the Narrative

The study aids in the ninth edition have been strengthened to support
students in their understanding of the material and in their development of
historical thinking skills. Identify the Big Idea questions at the start of
every chapter guide student reading and focus their attention on identifying
not just what happened, but why. Chapter timelines have been moved from
the last page of the chapter to the first, to enable students to more readily
grasp the major events and developments as they begin to read. A variety
of learning tools from the beginning to the end of each chapter support this
big idea focus. As they read, students will gain proficiency in historical
thinking skills via marginal review questions that ask students to
“Identify Causes,” “Trace Change over Time,” and “Understand Points of
View,” among other skills. New Section Review Questions help students
articulate the main points of each section of a chapter. Where students are
likely to stumble over a key concept, we boldface it in the text where it is
first mentioned and provide a new on-page glossary that defines the term.
The revised and expanded Chapter Review section provides a set of

20
Review Questions that restate the individual section review questions, a
Thematic Understanding question, and Making Connections questions
that ask students to consider broader historical issues, developments, and
continuities and changes over time. Terms to Know provides a list of Key
Concepts and Events and Key People students should know. Lastly, a
Key Turning Points question reminds students of important events and
asks them to consider periodization.

Helping Instructors Teach with Digital Resources

As noted, America’s History, Concise Edition is offered in Macmillan’s
premier learning platform, LaunchPad, an intuitive, interactive e-book
and course space. Free when packaged with the print text or available at a
low price when used alone, LaunchPad grants students and teachers access
to a wealth of online tools and resources built specifically for our text to
enhance reading comprehension and promote in-depth study.
Developed with extensive feedback from history instructors and
students, LaunchPad for America’s History includes the complete
narrative of the print book, the companion reader, Sources for America’s
History, and LearningCurve, an adaptive learning tool that is designed to
get students to read before they come to class. With new source-based
questions in the test bank and in the LearningCurve and the ability to
sort test bank questions by chapter learning objectives, instructors now
have more ways to test students on their understanding of sources and
narrative in the book.
This edition also includes Guided Reading Exercises that prompt
students to be active readers of the chapter narrative and auto-graded
primary source quizzes to test comprehension of written and visual
sources. These features, plus additional primary source documents,
video sources and tools for making video assignments, map activities,
flashcards, and customizable test banks, make LaunchPad a great asset
for any instructor who wants to enliven American history for students.

New Updates to the Narrative

In the new edition, we continue to offer instructors a bold account of U.S.
history that reflects the latest, most exciting scholarship in the field.
Throughout the book, we have given increased attention to political culture
and political economy, including the history of capitalism, using this
analysis to help students understand how society, culture, politics, and the

21
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
He stopped with his mouth open. A horse came down the main
street at a hard gallop. There was a distinct sensation. The drivers of
passing vehicles sat sidewise; a string of little half-dressed
pickaninnies streamed along the edge of the sidewalk in eager but
hopeless pursuit. A street-car that had stopped at the crossing failed
to go on because conductor and motorman were gaping after the
vision.
Riding cross-saddle, in the latest extreme of fashion, was young Mrs.
William Carter. The apparition would have startled them at any time,
but the lady was already famous, and her progress might be viewed
somewhat in the light of a Roman triumph.
Very pale, her dark eyes shining and her lips compressed, Fanchon
struck her steed sharply with her riding-crop. The horse, a spirited
young bay, came on at a gallop, with the clatter of maddened hoofs,
followed by the stream of pursuing children and their wild shouts of
applause. In this fashion Fanchon dashed past Judge Jessup and Mr.
Carter and disappeared in a cloud of dust on the highroad.
A comet could scarcely have had a more startling effect. Mr. Carter
said nothing, but his color became apoplectic. He stared after her for
a minute, and then, with a set face, he turned to the judge.
“What were you saying? Oh, I remember—yes, yes, I’ll come in to-
morrow and hear Dan address the jury,” he said hastily.
The judge smiled grimly.
“The verdict was reached to-day, Johnson. You’re a bit behindhand.”
As he spoke he held out his hand. “Congratulations on Dan,” he said
heartily. “I’m in a hurry. Want to walk back to my office with me?”
“No!” said Mr. Carter.
He knew what Jessup thought, he suspected him of shaking with
suppressed laughter, but the judge looked innocent enough. They
shook hands again absently, having forgotten that they had done so
twice already, and Mr. Carter strode away. He knew that he was
stared at, and he walked fast, his face still deeply red. At the door of
his office—he was in the insurance business—he found his office-boy
gaping down the street.
Mr. Carter stopped short.
“Here, you! Go into that office!” he said sharply. “What are you doing
out there, you young ninny? You’ll be picked up for a street-corner
loafer if you don’t mind your own business better!”
The alarmed youth retreated before him, apologizing. Mr. Carter,
with his hat still on, strode past the clerks in the outer office, went
into his own room, and slammed the door with such force that the
glass rattled.
One of the young stenographers looked up from her work and
laughed silently at the other.
“Seen his daughter-in-law?” she inquired in a whisper.
The other girl nodded.
“She’s awfully pretty and swell, anyway,” she murmured. “Oh, my—
Minnie, look!”
Across the street was the old road-house where William and his wife
had supped after the dance. As Mr. Carter’s stenographer looked out
now she saw a hastily saddled horse led to the door. A tall man
came out and swung himself into the saddle. It was Corwin.
The two girls across the street rose silently and leaned over their
machines to watch him. He rode well, turning his horse around,
starting at a quick trot, and breaking almost at once into a gallop.
“He’s gone after her, Minnie!”
Minnie nodded; then, hearing a noise in the inner room, they
dropped into their places and worked furiously. Mr. Carter opened
the door, looked in, and closed it sharply again. They heard him
return to his desk.
Minnie pulled her companion’s sleeve.
“He saw him!” she whispered.
The other girl assented, touching her lips with her finger. They could
hear earthquakelike sounds within, and they rattled away at their
typewriters, demurely silent; but through the open window they
could see, far in the distance, the furious horseman disappearing
down the turnpike.
His horse was a powerful animal, a far better traveler than the
young bay that had carried Fanchon. The two girls in the office
speculated in silence, and worked rapturously. Young Mrs. Carter
was the most exciting thing in a dull town at a dull time of the year,
and they were grateful to her.
Mr. Carter kept them late that day and worked them hard. Usually an
easy taskmaster, he called them in during the afternoon and gave
them page after page of dictation. It was half past six when he
slammed down the top of his desk, locked it, and went home.
He walked, and it was a long way. It was seven o’clock when he
opened the front door with his latch-key.
The family were already at dinner—all but William, who was walking
up and down the hall, looking haggard. Mr. Carter came in and hung
his hat upon the rack.
“Waiting for any one?” he asked his son dryly.
William raised his head.
“Yes, Fanchon. She hasn’t come in yet. I’m expecting her any
moment.”
“You needn’t,” his father retorted grimly. “She’s out riding with that
fellow—Caraffi’s manager.”
William said nothing, but he stopped short. Mr. Carter, after eying
him for an instant, went on into the dining-room. His wife, Daniel,
Emily, and Leigh were sitting around the table, eating the second
course disconsolately.
“I thought you’d never come—and we were hungry,” Mrs. Carter said
apologetically. “Miranda, go and get the soup for Mr. Carter. I had it
kept hot,” she added, glancing anxiously toward the hall door.
They could hear William walking to and fro again. As Miranda
disappeared for the soup, Mr. Carter looked up. He glanced at his
wife meaningly.
“She’s out riding with that man,” he said in an undertone.
“Johnson!”
His wife’s dismay only brought a grim smile to Carter’s face. He
unfolded his napkin without further comment. Before Miranda
returned with the soup-tureen, Mrs. Carter rallied sufficiently to lean
over and murmur across the table:
“I’ve got a lot to tell you—that dreadful girl was with that man this
morning—behind the Methodist Church! I saw—”
She stopped, for Leigh had risen suddenly. He flung his napkin on
the table and stalked out of the room with a white face. Mr. Carter
stared after him.
“What the—” he began.
Emily touched his hand warningly. Miranda was returning.
“Leigh’s awfully mashed on Fanchon,” Emily whispered irrelevantly,
returning to her dinner.
Mr. Carter shut his mouth hard, and the conversation languished.
Daniel spoke once about the weather, and his father nodded.
“Judge Jessup handed out a lot of compliments for you to-day, Dan,”
he remembered suddenly.
Mrs. Carter looked pleased, but even this fell flat. They could hear
William’s tramp continuing after Leigh went up-stairs. Mr. Carter rose
once and went to the door.
“Aren’t you coming in to eat your dinner, William?” he demanded.
“I’ve dined,” William replied shortly.
“Then I think you’d better go into the library and sit down,” said his
father meaningly.
William, halting in his walk, stared for a moment, puzzled. Then he
understood, and a deep red went up to his forehead. Without a
word, he turned, went into the library, and shut the door.
Miranda had brought on the dessert, but only Emily and Daniel ate
it. There was a heavy silence. Mr. Carter sat moodily, apparently
listening, and Mrs. Carter could think of nothing to say. She tried two
or three times and stopped, aghast at her own temerity. The three
vacant chairs—William’s, Fanchon’s, and Leigh’s—seemed to gape at
them. Daniel finally rose.
“I’ve got to prepare a paper for Judge Jessup,” he remarked quietly,
and left the room.
They heard him light his cigar and go up-stairs. It was then that Mr.
Carter rose also and went as usual into the library. Emily and her
mother, left alone, gaped at each other in a startled way. They heard
voices in the library, and then a heavy silence, filled with the odor of
tobacco. Emily began to be a little frightened.
“Mama, do you suppose she’s run away?” she whispered in an awed
tone.
Mrs. Carter cast a frightened look toward Miranda’s retreating figure,
and shook her head.
“I don’t know, Emily. Suppose we go and sit in the parlor? I don’t
think papa wants us in the library.”
They spent the evening sitting in the little unused parlor that
Fanchon hated. It was full of heavy stuffed furniture and old-
fashioned cabinets. Accustomed to a family gathering in the library,
they languished there, watching the clock.
“It’s getting awfully late,” said Emily finally, after an interminable
hour. “Where can she be?”
“Emily,” said Mrs. Carter irrelevantly, “I wish you wouldn’t say that
Leigh is ‘mashed’ on her. In the first place it’s absurd, and in the
second it’s vulgar.”
“But he is,” insisted Emily. “He’d get down in the mud and let her
walk on him—like Sir Walter Raleigh’s cloak. He says so.”
“Nonsense!” Mrs. Carter, trembling with nervousness, discovered that
it was half past ten. “You go to bed,” she ordered shortly.
After her daughter went up-stairs, she sat for a long time, waiting.
She was puzzled by the silence in the library. From time to time she
went to the window and looked out anxiously; yet she had no real
hope that her daughter-in-law would appear. She felt sure that
Fanchon had run away, and the disgrace of it made her face burn.
She turned the gas down and sat in semi-darkness, ashamed to look
at her own image in the long mirror between the windows.
The Carters had always had such good wives, such loyal, faithful
women. She had not failed herself, she had done her best, and
William, her first-born, the pride of her heart—must he be
disgraced?
She sat there watching and listening until nearly twelve o’clock. Still
she heard occasional sounds from the library. Finally, worn out, she
crept up-stairs to her room; but even there she continued to listen
and tremble at intervals.
At last she heard the sounds of locking up the house and her
husband’s heavy step on the stairs.
Mr. Carter came into the room and slammed the door. His wife had
crept hastily into bed, and she lay there, shivering a little with dread.
“What did you say to him, papa?”
“Say? Not a blamed word!” Mr. Carter sat down and pulled off his
boots, flinging one down with violence. “I guess I don’t have to say
anything,” he remarked grimly. “I reckon the fool’s got about
enough. Marrying a French ballet-dancer!”
Mrs. Carter drew a long breath.
“Where do you s’pose she is, Johnson?”
“How do I know? He’ll have to get a divorce—that’s as plain as the
nose on your face. Then I suppose the donkey’ll want to marry
Rosamond Silvertree, or Bloomie Bloomingkitten, or some other
actress.”
“Oh, hush!” groaned Mrs. Carter, burying her head in her pillow with
a sob. “I can’t bear it! Poor Willie!”
Mr. Carter restrained his tongue, but he flung the other boot into the
corner with a bang more eloquent than words.
 XIV
Down in the library William Carter waited alone. He was glad to be
alone. Aware of his father’s attitude, he had dragged through a
fearful evening. Mr. Carter had sat at the table, smoking and reading
his newspaper. He had said nothing about the one subject that was
uppermost in both minds; but at intervals he had lowered his paper
sufficiently to fix a fierce eye on the clock and then to turn it
significantly upon his son. Without meeting his glance, William felt it.
With the tide of rage and grief rising in his own heart, that hostile
eye—which seemed to say, “I told you so!” was intolerable.
He was thankful when his father’s stout figure disappeared into the
front part of the house. He heard the vigorous locking-up without
protest. It was evident that Mr. Carter had decided that Fanchon
wouldn’t return that night, and he was bound to lock up as usual. In
fact, he did it a little more violently than usual. It was an overt act
which relieved his feelings. Then, carrying a pitcher of iced water, he
went heavily up-stairs, and his son heard the sharp closing of his
bedroom door.
It took no very vigorous imagination, either, to fancy his mother’s
anxious inquiry for the truant, and the subsequent comment on the
situation. Even in the solitude of the library William’s face burned. He
was bewildered, too. He knew that he had reached a crisis, and he
did not know how to deal with it. To do anything seemed only to
publish his own misery. He had telephoned twice to the livery-stable
already, and been assured that Mrs. Carter’s horse was still out.
He had no idea where she had gone, and to follow, even in a motor,
would be senseless enough. It was a fine night; a full moon lighted
the roads. If she meant to return, she could get home so easily that
he could not believe she intended to do so.
As for Corwin, William had only seen the man two or three times,
and was cognizant of the gossip only through his father. People
didn’t talk to him.
His father had seen Corwin follow Fanchon, but had Fanchon
planned it all? Or had the man—a hard, coarse-looking brute—
pursued her without any invitation, without her consent? William
Carter did not know; he only felt a blind rage that he had suddenly
been forced to doubt his wife. It was hideous—simply hideous!
They had been quarreling lately nearly all the time—petty quarrels.
Fanchon evidently hated the place, she seemed to hate even her
husband’s people, and he had found her becoming wilder and
stranger every day. He knew she longed to go back to Paris, or at
least to New York; but William had never brought his mind to
consider even the possibility that she was disloyal, or could be. He
could not believe it now, but he found that the conviction was deep-
rooted in his father’s mind, and he saw it in his mother’s kind,
worried eyes.
What had they heard? He did not know—at least he was sure he did
not know it all. He saw something of it in Leigh’s white face to-night.
The boy was fond of Fanchon. William felt relief to think that at least
one member of his family liked her.
He watched the clock until the hands indicated midnight. Where
could she be? He walked the floor again.
Unobserved, he could give way to his agony of mind. Had there
been an accident? Had Fanchon been hurt?
The suspense was fast becoming a deep and keen agony. He was
shaken. He knew that his thoughts had wandered to Virginia, to the
peace he might have had. Had Fanchon seen it? Was she tormenting
him in a wild fit of jealousy, or—intolerable and monstrous thought!
—his wife in flight with a man who looked to him to be no more than
a common gamester?
How still it was! Through the open window the soft night air poured
in; and now it had a difference, a perceptible quickening, the
keenness of the morning. It was nearly one o’clock.
He flung himself into a chair and waited, burying his head in his
hands. He tried to think coherently, but he could not. Then a thrill
ran through him as the telephone-bell rang at his elbow. He
snatched up the receiver. A man’s voice called for Mr. William Carter
—a gruff, half-drowsy negro voice.
“Yes, yes! What is it?” he questioned.
“De boss tol’ me to watch out fo’ dat horse Miz Carter hired, suh. I’s
been up all night—dat horse jes’ come in dis minute. He’s drippin’,
an’ he ain’t got no rider, suh.”
William dropped the receiver and stood motionless, as if turned to
stone. Good God, how he had wronged her! There had been an
accident!
A vision of Fanchon lying by the wayside, her lovely face cold in the
moonlight, her helpless, pretty, idle hands flung out, pierced his
heart. He groaned aloud. Then his sickened brain cleared and he
roused himself. He must get help, hire a motor, and go out to
search.
He raised his head sharply. His strained ear caught a sound at the
front door. He crossed the room almost at a stride, switched on the
light in the hall, threw back his father’s elaborate chains and bolts
with a shaking hand, and flung the door open. On the threshold,
deadly pale and dripping wet, stood his wife.
“Fanchon!”
His first impulse of wild relief was lost in another and a stronger
feeling. The look on her face checked the words on his lips.
She came in slowly, reluctantly, putting out a small, groping hand. As
the light from the hall lamp fell full upon her, he saw that she had
lost her hat, and that her pretty hair clung in wet curls to her
forehead. All the gaiety and frivolity of that Parisian habit was gone.
It was torn and muddy and wet. But she did not go to him, she did
not exclaim that she had been hurt and half drowned. She walked
past him, a little unsteadily, and went into the library.
William shut the door and followed her. She had dropped into a chair
and lay there, half reclining, her arm across the back and her face
hidden on it. Her husband stood looking down at her in silence for a
moment; then he turned without a word and went into the dining-
room, poured some brandy into a glass, and brought it.
“Drink this!” he said peremptorily.
She lifted the glass slowly, and, without raising her eyes, tasted the
liquor and then thrust it aside.
“I know what you think!” she said in a low voice. “It isn’t true—I’ve
done nothing—nothing at all!”
His face hardened.
“Why do you say that, Fanchon? I haven’t accused you.”
She turned with a gesture of impatience.
“I know they have—your father and your mother!”
William, who had taken the glass from her, set it down on the table.
“You’re wet through,” he said coldly. “Go up-stairs and change. You
can talk afterward—if you want to.”
“I don’t care if I’m wet!” she answered a little wildly. “I’d rather bear
wet than your face!”
“I’m sorry my face is so unbearable. I had no thought when I saw
you but anxiety. There’s been an accident. You haven’t even told me
whether you’re hurt!”
“It wasn’t an accident,” said Fanchon. “The horse got down in the
stream and wallowed. I had to get off to save myself, and when he
came out he ran off.”
William lifted his eyes reluctantly to hers.
“That horse has just come in, Fanchon. I got a telephone as you
came up the porch steps.”
She did not seem to grasp the significance of this. She put up a
wandering hand and pushed back her damp hair.
“I can’t help it!” she said sharply. “It’s so—I never would have got
here but for a motor. Some people—perfect strangers, too—were
coming this way, and they brought me. We came faster than any
horse could go.”
“Where were you? Where did the horse roll?”
“At Fanshawe’s Creek—you know, half-way to the Mountain Inn.”
William turned abruptly and walked across the room and back again.
“That wouldn’t take an hour and a half for a horse,” he remarked
dryly. “It’s one o’clock, Fanchon.”
A flame of red shot up in her white cheeks.
“I think he got into the water at about eleven o’clock. I tried to make
him ford the stream, and he—he just got down and wallowed in the
water. I had to get off.”
“You went out just after luncheon—while mother was at lunch, in
fact—and you were coming home on those lonely roads at eleven
o’clock at night, alone?”
She sat up in her chair at that, her flushed face turned fully toward
him, and something like a flame kindling in her fawn-like eyes.
“Of course your mother told you!”
“Told me what?”
“About my talk with Corwin in the lane.”
William stared at her.
“My mother told me nothing. I didn’t mean to tell you, I didn’t mean
to say anything,” he added grimly; “but since you’ve said so much, I
will. I heard from father that Corwin followed you out on the
turnpike to-day—to the edification of the town! Was he with you at
the creek?”
Fanchon sat quite still, looking at him, her large eyes seeming to
grow larger and darker in her white face. He returned the look as
steadily, not in anger, but with a kind of grimness new in her
experience with him. Neither of them moved, and the stillness in the
room was so deep that they both heard the familiar sounds outside.
The church clock struck in the distance, and some cocks crowed.
The fresh breeze stirred the curtains in the window while the shaded
lamp on the table flared up with the little gust. In the flare William
saw the misery on his wife’s face.
“Fanchon, that man’s pursuing you—he’s a villain! What has
happened? Tell me—I have a right to know!”
Something in his changed tone touched her. She sank back in her
chair, covering her face with her hands.
“Mon Dieu!” she murmured brokenly, and then, as her emotions
swept her away, she burst into wild and uncontrollable weeping, her
sobs shaking her from head to foot.
Something in the passion of her tears, and in the crumpled
helplessness of the small figure in the chair, touched William in his
turn. He stood looking at her without moving, thinking unhappily. He
had made a mess of it; but after all it wasn’t all her fault. It was his,
and he still loved her. From what he had suffered to-night he knew
that he loved her. Suddenly he bent over the small, writhing figure
and spoke.
“Tell me, Fanchon,” he said hoarsely. “Must I thrash that villain?”
Very slowly she raised her head, very slowly and reluctantly she
raised her tear-drenched eyes to his.
“I—I didn’t go with him, I didn’t want to see him—he followed me.”
She hesitated, trembling. “I don’t know how to tell you. He overtook
me and he made me come back. I’d lost my way. He made me go
back to the inn—we ate dinner together.”
“You dined at a public road-house with that man—a man I wouldn’t
ask to my father’s house?”
She nodded, biting her lips.
For a moment he was hot with rage; but he curbed it. He wanted to
be just, and he was deeply moved. As she sat there she looked as
she had looked once in Paris, when he had first seen her—a butterfly
of a creature fighting to live, fighting hopelessly in the midst of
glittering, sordid surroundings. He hadn’t been blinded, his eyes had
been wide open, but he had fallen in love with her; and he had been
moved, too, by compassion. He had snatched her out of that gay,
hollow sham of a life, and he had meant to save her, to keep her
safe. Yet, as she sat there now, she looked forlorn and helpless and
beset.
“Fanchon,” he said gravely and gently, “tell me why you did this. You
didn’t mean to do it, you didn’t set out to do it—why did you? See, I
trust you—I’m asking you to tell me the truth.”
“I lost my way.” She repeated it as if she had a lesson by rote.
“Corwin overtook me and made me turn back. I was hungry, and we
ate dinner at the same table—in the public dining-room. Then—then
I didn’t want him to ride back with me—and I went out of the side
door and started alone. When I came to the crossing above
Fanshawe’s Creek, I didn’t know which way to go, and I chose the
wrong road. I rode so far that I got frightened. I asked at a house
out there—a woman with a queer name—Quantah, I think. I had to
come back to the crossing. Then, when I did get to the creek, the
horse lay down in the water. I sat and waited, dripping, until a motor
picked me up. That’s all.”
“No,” said William, “that’s not all. You’re afraid of that man,
Fanchon!”
“I!” she laughed tremulously. “Why do you think that?”
He was watching her, and he saw her eyes change. He was right.
She was afraid of Corwin.
“I don’t think it,” he said gravely. “I know it. Go on, Fanchon; tell me
the rest.”
“I have nothing to tell,” she replied slowly, deliberately, but with
shaking lips. “You—you don’t believe me, n’est-ce-pas?”
William, looking steadily into her face, made no reply. His changed,
white face frightened her. She rose unsteadily to her feet, a forlorn
little figure.
“I’m not afraid of Corwin,” she said angrily, “not a bit! Ciel, why
should I be afraid of any one? I ask you that, mon ami!”
He still said nothing, his grave eyes on hers. Fanchon returned his
look—tried to return it steadily. She had told him a falsehood. She
had never been afraid of falsehood; it was an easy way of escape.
But now, under his eyes, she flinched. She blushed scarlet, put out a
wavering little hand, and tried to catch at his, but he moved away.
“Go up-stairs,” he said gravely, without anger, in the remote tone of
a man who no longer cared. “You’re worn out; you’ll take cold. I told
you so before. Go up-stairs to bed. Shall I rouse Miranda? Do you
need help?”
“Help?” she shivered, but not with cold. “Non, non! No help for me—
here!”
As she spoke she turned, lifted the discarded glass of brandy to her
lips, and drained it. Then, without looking at him again, she left the
room.
The light was still on in the hall, but she felt her way to the stairs
blindly. She was crying. She had not intended to lie to him, but it
was so much easier than to tell the truth. She clung to the banisters
for a moment, sobbing bitterly; then, dashing the tears from her
eyes, she went on, aware that he was still standing motionless
where she had left him.
As she dragged herself to the head of the stairs, she was suddenly
aware of a figure in the upper hall. She stopped and looked around
in a panic. She expected her father-in-law, but it was only Leigh.
“Are you safe?” he asked eagerly. “There’s been an accident—I knew
it! You’ve been hurt, Fanchon?”
She looked at him in surprise.
“Where were you, Leigh?”
“I’ve been up all night. I knew William was, too, and I’ve waited.”
He was eighteen, but he looked younger, and his boyish face was
white with anxiety. With a sudden impulse, Fanchon laid her hands
on his shoulders.
“I’m safe—quite safe, dear boy!” she whispered, and, lifting her pale,
beautiful face to his, she kissed him lightly on both cheeks. “Dear
Leigh—dear brother!” she murmured. “I shall love you—toujours!”
Leigh, unused to being kissed, turned from white to red, but he felt
as if he had received an accolade.
 XV
The only member of the Carter family who left the house with a
cheerful face on the following morning was Daniel. There had been
practically nothing said at breakfast. Fanchon kept to her room,
William briefly explaining the accident at the creek and adding that
his wife had a chill. Mrs. Carter went up to see her, but was refused
admittance. So was Emily. Mr. Carter read the newspaper more
thoroughly than usual, and Leigh ate in a dream.
Daniel, aware of the strained atmosphere, found difficulty in
suppressing a smile. He had encountered, at intervals, the
expressive whites of Miranda’s eyes. She had carried up Fanchon’s
breakfast, and she knew Job Wills, the hostler at the livery-stable,
who had come by in the morning, on his way home after an all-night
shift. What Miranda did not know about Mrs. William Carter’s ride
wasn’t worth knowing. Her eyes nearly upset Daniel’s gravity; but he
finally left the house, feeling a little guilty. It was wrong to find
amusement in an incident that seemed so tragic to the others.
Daniel therefore suppressed the twinkle in his eyes and set out for
Judge Jessup’s office.
His way lay through the church lane and down to the lower corner of
the main street. It was a way that, at this season of the year, was
full of blossoming. It was past time now for the early flowers, but an
old-fashioned clustering yellow rose climbed over the Paysons’ fence
and tossed its fragrance and its falling petals to the passers-by like
the confetti at a carnival. A scarlet-hooded woodpecker was climbing
the tall trunk of the old oak by the churchyard gate.
Daniel walked slowly. Rapid motion increased his limp, but when he
moved in his usual leisurely way his step only halted a little. He was
no longer thinking of his own family, nor of the whites of Miranda’s
eyes. His mind had reverted, as it usually did, to Virginia Denbigh.
He was not startled, therefore, when he saw her standing at the
corner of the church. She was not wearing her big hat to-day, but an
odd little bonnet-shaped affair that showed her pretty hair and her
white forehead, and she was dressed in pink. He thought it was the
most lovely shade of pink he had ever seen.
She smiled as she saw him coming.
“I was waiting for you, Dan.”
He flushed, and his eyes shone.
“I like that bonnet, Virginia. At first I thought I couldn’t like anything
but the big hat, but this shows your hair. It’s like sunshine to-day.”
She laughed.
“My hat was a thousand years old! This is brand-new—I trimmed it.”
“I wish I could do anything so well,” he said in a tone of real regret.
“I couldn’t.”
“Not even a speech to the jury?”
She laughed a little tremulously. Something in Daniel always touched
her. She supposed it was his accident.
“Any one can address a jury,” he replied, “but no one but you could
trim that bonnet, Virginia.”
“If you praise it so much, I shall never take it off.” She laughed
again, but her eyes grew very grave and kind. “Dan, I heard you
speak in court yesterday.”
He was startled.
“Really? Where were you, Virginia?”
“Oh, way back! I was passing the court-house, and I heard two
colored men speak about it. One said: ‘Dan Carter, he’s makin’ a
great speech, yessuh, he sho’ is. ’Pears like he’s got dat jury all
bemuzzled!’” Virginia laughed delightedly. “I went in after that. It
was so crowded I thought I’d have to stand, but Mr. Payson was
there near the door, and he made some one bring a chair. I could
just see the back of your head, Dan, but I heard.”
His face glowed now.
“How strange!” he exclaimed in a low voice. “I knew you were there.
No, I didn’t see you, Virginia. I was speaking, and suddenly—well, I
felt that you were there. I remember I half looked around. I thought
you’d smile at me.”
She gave him a quick, startled look—a look that seemed to express
some new perception of him; but his eyes were averted. He was
smiling absently, as if talking to himself.
“I didn’t smile, Dan,” she said softly. “I was too deeply touched. I
don’t know why we all felt that way, but we did. Yet when I took
your speech to pieces in my mind I found how simple it was. You
just told us that man’s story, but you told it so simply it went straight
to our hearts.”
He smiled.
“That’s all I can do, Virginia. I’m a simple fellow—I can only tell the
simple truth. There’s no cause for all this—this fanfare of trumpets in
the newspapers, I mean—about my speech. Anybody could do it.”
She shook her head.
“Nobody else could do it. That’s just it. You’re like Lincoln, Dan. They
say he thought nothing of the Gettysburg address. I believe he
wrote it on his way there. I wish you’d tell me when you’re going to
speak again. I want to be there; I want to hear you ‘bemuzzle’ the
jury again.”
His eyes lit up.
“Will you come? Really?”
“Every time—if you’ll tell me. You can phone me, Dan.”
He drew a long breath.
“I shall make great speeches, sure enough, if you’re there! I couldn’t
help it. Only I wish you’d sit where I can see you—will you,
Virginia?”
She laughed.
“In which hat, Dan?”
He considered a moment.
“The old one, please! When I have dreams about you I see you in
that hat.”
“I’m afraid it’s given you nightmare! I didn’t know it was as bad as
that!”
She laughed again, a little tremulously. Suddenly she began to see
what she had never quite seen before. Poor Daniel cared for her!
She was afraid that he cared more than she had dreamed. It
touched her so much that her eyes misted.
“Nightmare? Not a bit of it. I tell you what to do, Virginia—when
you’re through with it let me have it. I’ll hang it up over my desk
when I want an inspiration. A poor lawyer needs an inspiration. The
law’s as dry as dust.”
She lifted her eyes reluctantly but smilingly to him. She had almost
been afraid to meet them, but she was not now. Dan’s look was just
the same look he had always given her—and she had never
understood!
“I’ll give it to you for a waste-paper basket,” she said gaily.
Then she stopped, her hand on the stone gate-post of the old
church. They had been walking slowly through the lane, and Daniel
halted, surprised.
“Going in here, Virginia?”
She smiled.
“Yes. There’s to be a Sunday-school festival. Besides, they’ve just
cleaned up the church. I took all our prayer-books away for the
refurbishing; now I’m going to put them back in the pew.”
As she spoke, he glanced down at the armful of books she held. He
had been to church with the Denbighs more than once, and he
remembered the colonel’s big prayer-book and hymnal and the
books for their guests. He had used that old red one himself. Then
his eye fell upon two smaller ones of brown morocco with Virginia’s
monogram on the clasp of the case.
“You’re still carrying your old set, Virginia,” he remarked thoughtfully.
Here was a chance for a gift, perhaps. “They’re worn at the edges.”
She looked down, blushing suddenly.
“Are they? I hadn’t noticed.”
Something in her tone had made Daniel take the books from the pile
on her arm. It was a set, prayer-book and hymnal bound in one and
prettily mounted. He slipped the clasp and opened them. A faded
pansy slipped between the pages. He clasped it hastily and handed
it back.
“I thought I knew them,” he said hastily.
“Yes?” Virginia’s eyes avoided his. Her lips were trembling, he
thought. “I’ve had them a long time. William—your brother—gave
them to me when I was just sixteen.”
“I wonder,” said Daniel, looking up at the old church, “how long ago
they planted that English ivy! There’s a perfect mantle of it, isn’t
there?”
“Grandfather says the old rector planted it—the one who married
grandfather and grandmother in this very church.”
“I suppose he did as much for my grandparents,” said Daniel. “I
wonder if they gave him a good fee!”
“Oh, you lawyer!” cried Virginia, and laughed happily.
But Daniel continued to look at the ivy. He had seen her face.
“She still loves William,” he thought bitterly.
Virginia, hiding her confusion, began to ascend the old stone steps.
“Why, there’s your father!” she exclaimed suddenly. “I didn’t know
that he often came this way.”
Daniel, who was very pale again, looked around.
“He counted on walking down with me, I fancy,” he remarked
quietly, aware of the thunderstorm in Mr. Carter’s face.
Virginia saw it, too, and made haste.
“I’m going in now. Good-by, Daniel, and remember—about that next
speech.”
He watched her as she went into the old church, stopping at the
door to wave a greeting to his father. Framed thus, she made a
picture that he kept in his mind all the day and many days
thereafter.
Mr. Carter came up, a little out of breath and very red.
“Going my way, father?”
“I suppose I am!”
Mr. Carter slowed his steps to suit his lame son’s gait. He was
moody, and he had his morning paper done up like a club in his
hand. He slashed viciously at the church snowball as they reached it.
“My Lord, to think of that lovely girl—and what I’ve got for a
daughter-in-law!” he growled.
Daniel, who understood the process of his father’s mind without
asking any questions, said nothing.
“I’ve got a nickelette-show, a ballet-dancer, a runaway-with-a-
gambler daughter-in-law, that’s what I’ve got!”
They had reached the street now, and Daniel checked him.
“Hush, father!” the young man said gently. “Some one will hear you.”
“Hear me?” bawled Mr. Carter. “Hear me? Drat it! D’you suppose the
whole town doesn’t know? I met Dr. Barbour when I came out of the
house just now. He says the Bulls, those new people at the corner of
Hill Street, brought her home last night at one o’clock—I mean this
morning—in a motor. What d’you suppose they’ll say?”
“Perhaps they’ve got some sense and won’t say anything,”
suggested Daniel, thinking of the prayer-book and Virginia’s face.
“They told Barbour, and he’ll tell every one—and it isn’t twelve hours
old.”
“We can’t do anything, father. Give the girl a chance. William says it
was an accident.”
“An accident? And your mother saw her flirting with Corwin in the
morning!” Mr. Carter could not restrain his ire. “I tell you, Dan, I
wouldn’t mind so much if William wasn’t behaving like a lummox. He
won’t get a divorce. He told me so this morning.”
“Good Heavens, why should he? It isn’t as bad as that. She’s only a
wild girl, and she hates our ways. Why shouldn’t she? We’ve been
finding fault with her from the beginning. I don’t see why you spoke
of a divorce to William.”
“Why?” Mr. Carter set his teeth. Then, as they got to the corner, he
spoke his mind. “I want him to get a divorce, behave like a
gentleman, and marry Virginia Denbigh—if she’ll have him.”
“I’m sure Virginia wouldn’t have him, if he got a divorce to ask her,”
said Daniel quietly. “She’s not that kind of a woman.”
“She’s in love with him,” replied Mr. Carter; “but I don’t care for that,
either, if I can make the fool shake off this—this wildcat!”
Daniel, who had reached Judge Jessup’s door, smiled.
“I’m really sorry for the wildcat,” he said quietly. “She’s alone, and
she hasn’t a friend—unless you count Leigh.”
“Leigh’s a ninny!” Mr. Carter retorted, and went on, still storming, to
his office.
But by twelve o’clock he had worked some of his temper off. The
process of cooling down began and ended, too, in sympathy for
William. After all, it was hardest on William. He had been a donkey,
but he had—in common with the other Carters—a natural horror of
notoriety for his women-folks.
Divorce and scandal! Mr. Carter, thinking hard, could not recall a
single case in his own family. Of course Uncle Duff Carter had
quarreled with his wife, but it was about a back lot that adjoined
their place. He wanted to sow it to oats for his horses, and his wife
wanted to keep it for a private burial-ground for the family. There
hadn’t been the least bit of scandal about that quarrel, and it was
made up before his uncle died. He was buried, by the way, in that
same back lot, with a monument of Florentine marble. His widow
had her own way!
As for a runaway wife, or any kind of a wife who wasn’t what Mr.
Carter called “a lady,” there was no record of it. William, his eldest
son and the pride of his heart, seemed about to make the first break
in a long line. It must distress William as much as it did his father.
Mr. Carter began to feel the greatest compunction about his son.
The boy had behaved like a donkey, but there was no use in crying
over spilt milk. The only way was to help him set it right. Of course,
if the talk got no farther, and William chose to forgive her and could
keep her in hand, there was nothing to be done about it.
As Mr. Carter’s rage against Fanchon began to cool, he saw the
advantage of suppressing the scandal and making her behave. He
had no very clear idea of how this should be done, except his firm
belief that any sensible man could prevent such doings in his own
household. He belonged, too, to a type of manhood that has long
ago decided on the simplest method to avenge an insult to his
family. He couldn’t recall an ancestor who under such provocation
would fail to shoot his man. Times had changed now, but Mr. Carter
felt an intense desire to annihilate that brute, Corwin.
He had no intention of mentioning this to William. The cooling-off
process had reached the stage of common sense; but he felt that he
must talk things over with his son. He had experience of life, if he
had no experience with a recalcitrant wife, and he wanted to
suggest some kind of restraint for his daughter-in-law. It seemed to
him a perfectly practical thing—because he had never tried it. A
moral strait-jacket for Fanchon appealed to his mind, at the moment,
more strongly than any other idea in life.
He got through the morning’s work, lunched alone, and then waited
until three o’clock. At that time he could endure it no longer. He had
caught his two girl stenographers whispering, and he had seen the
office-boy watching the inn opposite, where Corwin had stayed the
day before. The office-boy brought Mr. Carter’s resolution to a head.
He closed his desk sharply, snatched up his hat, and started for
William’s office.
The office was situated on the top floor of the Payson Building.
William was the buyer and traveling agent of Mr. Payson’s chain of
department-stores. There was only a modest branch store in the
home town, but in larger cities there were towering beehives bearing
the name of Payson.
William had traveled abroad for these stores, and now, in his private
office here, he was still directing the foreign correspondence of the
firm. It was a position of great responsibility, and it carried a
handsome salary and perquisites. Mr. Carter was proud of his son’s
advance and proud of his ability to keep up with it. It was his pride
in him that made this unfortunate marriage such a bitter
disappointment.
He passed through the crowded shop, glancing at the long aisles of
merchandise and noting the rugs—some of them brought from
Turkey by William, others imported by his advice to be sent to the
larger markets in the North. At the elevator Mr. Carter encountered
Mr. Payson—the rich man who had paid for the singers at the
concert where Fanchon had made herself notorious.
“I’m going up to see my son a moment,” said Mr. Carter, as they
shook hands.
Payson nodded, but he did not repeat his commendation of William.
Instead, he looked rather odd and spoke about the weather.
“Fine for the crops,” he said; “but we need more rain.”
Mr. Carter assented. He felt uneasy. There was something odd in
Payson’s manner. The magnate got off at the second floor, and the
elevator continued its ascent. At the top Mr. Carter got out and
hurried to his son’s door. As no one answered his knock, he opened
it and went in.
It was a good-sized office, furnished in accordance with Mr. Payson’s
ideas of business—that is, in the latest and most solid fashion. On a
table in the center of the room stood a bottle and a glass, and
William Carter was stretched in a chair beside it, lying half on the
table, his head down, sound asleep.
Mr. Carter stood aghast. He could see the haggard profile and the
dark rings under the closed eyes. Worn out with his heart-breaking
night vigil, William had fallen asleep; but his father felt that he was
looking on the wreck of his son’s life, that William, in his misery, had
sought oblivion in the old and time-honored way.
 XVI
Leigh Carter had attained the dignity of his eighteenth birthday a few
days before the arrival of his brother’s bride. He had done fairly well
at the high school, and was preparing now, during vacation, for a
preliminary examination for the university which had educated the
male Carters for generations.
Leigh had some mental gifts and a taste for poetry, which seemed to
indicate a literary career, and his fond mother regarded him as a
budding genius. There was a wide gap in age between the two
younger and the two older Carters, occasioned by the death of three
intervening children, and Mrs. Carter’s affections had always
centered on her baby boy, as she still called Leigh—to his great
indignation. Her pride had been in William, her sympathy for poor
Dan, but her doting fondness was for Leigh.
Mr. Carter did not approve of it. He had warned her more than once
that she couldn’t bring up anything but an incubator chicken in that
way and make a success of it.
Leigh wasn’t exactly a success. The latent manhood in him had
scarcely stirred. He was a tall, lanky youth with a handsome, boyish
face and the eyes of a girl. He had been a dreamer, too, and had
spent much time in reading romances from the news-stands; but he
was a good boy, he had cultivated no vices, and “milksop” was the
worst charge that other youths of his set could make against him.
He had reached the impressionable age without falling deeply in
love, and his mind and heart happened to be in a peculiarly
receptive state when Fanchon suddenly burst upon his vision. Her
beauty, the subtle charm and mystery of those fawn-like eyes, and
her caressing voice, captured his youthful fancy. He could
understand why William loved her, and he became at once her slave
and worshiper. Then, when he saw the attitude of the family
revealed in pitiless criticism, he became her still more devoted
champion. Fanchon saw it, and she coaxed the boy into still deeper
infatuation. It was her triumph to secure at least one ally in a hostile
family, and she used him as a buffer. She always had a kind word for
Leigh, a soft pat of the hand, an errand which she conferred as a
favor. Leigh, immersed in romantic visions, saw her as the loveliest
and most persecuted of beings, and he was ready to give battle to
the entire family in her behalf. As Emily expressed it, he would have
made himself into Sir Walter Raleigh’s cloak for Fanchon to tread
upon.
The storm that had followed upon her disappearance on horseback
had beaten upon Leigh’s nerves. He had lashed himself into a dumb
fury in the solitude of his room because his father and mother dared
to doubt his paragon, and William, her husband, merely sat and
waited for her to come back. William’s supineness was the last
straw. Leigh had been in a frenzy when Fanchon finally returned,
and the meeting on the stairs and her soft kiss of gratitude had gone
to his head. He had refused to join a game of baseball that
afternoon because he wanted to go home and complete a poem to
his sister-in-law.
Fanchon had sent him on an errand to the nearest chemist. She had
given him a prescription for some headache powders, she said, and
Leigh did not know that he was returning with a peculiarly effective
preparation of “bloom” that she usually applied at night. He carried
the package with something of the air and feeling with which Sir
Lancelot might have worn the colors of Elaine.
It happened that his way led him past a corner of the main street,
where Mr. Bernstein had just made special arrangements for
showing Rosamond Silvertree’s feature pictures at the little local
theater. Mr. Bernstein himself, in a new plaid suit with a diamond
scarf-pin, was viewing a poster of Rosamond in the effective, if
rather startling, costume of “A Belle from Borneo.” He had
encountered Leigh on one or two previous occasions, and knew him
to be the youngest son of Johnson Carter. As the boy approached,
looking a little pale from his night’s vigil, Mr. Bernstein eyed him
shrewdly.
“Looks like a regular moon-calf,” he thought; “but I guess he’s got
gumption enough to take a warnin’ to the rest of ’em. Hello, young
man!” he called out. “Been in to see this picture? Greatest picture on
the screen! There’s a matinee to-day and two showings to-night.”
Leigh shook his head, stopping to gaze in some amazement at the
highly colored portrait of the fair Rosamond.
“Gee!” he remarked. “She’s fat!”
“Fat?” Mr. Bernstein blew his cheeks out and stared at him with a
kindling eye. “Fat, boy? Why, she’s superb! That’s Rosamond
Silvertree, the most beautiful star on the screen!”
Leigh giggled. He giggled like a girl, a faint pink color coming into his
beardless cheeks, and his girlish eyes dancing.
“How much do you suppose she weighs?” he asked gleefully. “Looks
to me like four hundred pounds—and some spangles!”
“Miss Silvertree’s a lady, young man!” retorted Mr. Bernstein
reprovingly. “She’s got one of the finest figures I ever saw.
Spangles? I want you to know that there’s one scene where she’s
got on the fetchingest costume—five yards of chiffon and fifteen
pounds of crystal spangles! It’s beauty, classic beauty, on the
screen.”
Leigh suppressed a giggle this time, and only smiled inanely, edging
away.
“Looks kinder foolish,” Mr. Bernstein reflected, but he laid a detaining
hand on Leigh’s arm. “See here, you’re Leigh Carter, ain’t you?”
Leigh nodded. He half expected an offer for the screen, and he
lingered, coloring like a girl.
“Then I guess I can say a word to you—confidential, you
understand?” Mr. Bernstein winked slowly. “Entirely confidential—
between gentlemen, see?” he added with a stroke of inspiration.
Leigh, flattered in spite of himself, nodded. Mr. Bernstein linked an
arm in his.
“Step this way,” he said casually. “Don’t want to attract attention.
Now, Mr. Carter——” He paused, allowing the formal address to sink
in. It did. Leigh straightened up. “There’s a fellow over at the inn
named Corwin. Heard of him?”
Leigh’s color deepened.
“I think so,” he said stiffly.
Mr. Bernstein nodded.
“He’s Caraffi’s manager. Caraffi’s up at the Hot Springs, taking baths
to reduce his flesh, or to make his hair grow, and Corwin’s killing
time down here. Now I ain’t meaning any offense. I’m speaking as a
friend, you understand? This man, Corwin, he ain’t a gentleman.
He’s a sport an’ a gambler an’ a loafer. He ain’t any nearer being a
gentleman than that there lamp-post’s near being a brindled cow. He
gets full, too, and when he does he talks, see?”
Leigh, beginning to suspect the drift of the talk, was becoming
furious.
“I take no interest in Mr. Corwin,” he said sharply. “If that’s all you’ve
got to say, Mr. Bernstein——”
“Hold on!” said Mr. Bernstein impatiently. “I’ve got to tell one of your
family—for the sake of the lady. If you want to protect your sister-in-
law from scandal, Mr. Leigh Carter, you’d better listen. I ain’t
believing the talk myself, but it ain’t my business. If it was, I’d lam
the feller good an’ plenty!”
Leigh stared at him. He did not want to listen, but he was boy
enough to want to hear. He breathed rather short.
“I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Bernstein,” he cried excitedly. “I
won’t hear talk of my sister-in-law!”