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Ravenel Plantation occupies a singular rise of wooded land in North Carolina, between Way-Home River, Loon Mountain, and the Silver Fork. The road which leads from Charlotte toward the south branches by the Haunted Hollow, the right fork going to Carlisle and the left following the rushing waters of the Way-Home River to the very gate-posts of Ravenel Plantation, through which the noisy water runs.
Ravenel Mansion, which stands a good three miles from the north gate of the plantation, is approached by a driveway of stately pines. The main part is built of gray stone, like a fort, with mullioned windows, the yellow glass of early colonial times still in the upper panes. But the show-places of the plantation are the south wing (added by Francis Ravenel the fourth), and the great south gateway, bearing the carved inscription: "Guests are Welcome."
Long ago, when Charles II. was on his way to be crowned, a certain English Ravenel—Foulke by name—had the good-luck to fall in with that impulsive monarch, and for no further service than the making of a rhyme, vile in meter and villainous as to truth-telling, to receive from him an earldom and a grant of "certain lands beyond the seas."
Here, in these North Carolina lands, for nearly two hundred years, Ravenel child had grown to Ravenel man, educated abroad, taught to believe little in American ways, and marrying frequently with a far-off cousin in England or in France.
They were gay lads these Ravenels, hard riders, hard drinkers, reckless in living and love-making, and held to have their way where women were concerned. Indeed, this tradition had ancient authority, for on the stone mount of the sundial in the lilac-walk there had been chiselled, in the year 1771, by some disgruntled rival perhaps:
The present owner of the plantation, Francis Ravenel, seventh of the name, stood in the great doorway, dinner dressed, the night after his return from the East, viewing this inscription with a humorous drawing together of the brows.
He was handsome, as the Ravenel men had always been, with a bearing which caused men and women, especially women, to follow him with their eyes. Certain family characteristics were markedly his: the brown hair and the wide gray eyes, which seemed to brood over a woman as though she were the only one to be desired—these had belonged to the Ravenel men for generations; but the shape of the head, with its broad brow, the short upper lip and appealing smile, he had from his lady mother, who had been a D'Hauteville, of New Orleans.
From the time of his majority, some five years before, the South had been rife with tales of his wit, his love-making, and his lawlessness. Whatever the cause, women were forever falling in love with him, and the mention of his name from Newport News to New Orleans would but call forth the history of another love-affair, in which, according to the old inscription, he had taken a heart, had broken a heart, and then had ridden away.
He awaited coffee and cigarettes in the great hail where the candles had been lighted for the evening, although the sun was still above Loon Mountain. Looking within he saw their gleams on vanished roses in the old brocade; on dingy armor of those who had fought with Charlie Stuart; on stately mahogany, old pewters, and on portraits of the fighting Ravenels of days long gone. There was Malcom, who died music-mad; Des Grieux, the one with ruff and falcon, said to be a Romney; and that Francis, fourth of the name (whom the present Francis most resembled), who had lost his life, the story ran, for a queen too fair and fond.
Mrs. Ravenel, adoring and tender, in lavender and old lace, the merriest, gayest, most illogical little mother in all that mother-land of the South, regarded Frank as he re-entered with a blush of pleasure on her bright, fond face.
"Who has the Mainwaring place, mother?" he asked.
"A heavenly person," Mrs. Ravenel answered.
"Man, I suppose," Francis laughed.
Mrs. Ravenel nodded assent and repeated: "Heavenly! An Irishman; with black hair, very black brows, pale like a Spaniard, about thirty—"
"Your own age," Frank interrupted, with a complimentary gesture.
—"who rides like a trooper, drinks half a glass of whiskey at a gulp, and is the greatest liar I can imagine."
"It's enlightening to discover an adored parent's idea of a heavenly person," Francis said, with an amused smile.
"He sends me flowers and writes me poetry. We exchange," she explained, and there came to her eyes a delightfully critical appreciation of her own doings.
"The heavenly person has—I suppose—a name?" Frank suggested.
"Dermott McDermott."
"Has the heavenly person also a profession?"
"He is"—Mrs. Ravenel hesitated a minute—"he is an international lawyer and a Wall Street man."
"It sounds imposing," Frank returned. "What does it mean?"
"I don't know," his mother answered. " I have enough of the artist in me to be satisfied with the mere sound. His English—"
"His Irish," Frank interrupted.
—"is that of Dublin University, the most beautiful speech in the world. He is here in the interest of the Mainwaring people, he says, who want some information concerning those disputed mines. Added to his other attractions, he can talk in rhyme. Do you understand? Can talk in rhyme ," she repeated, with emphasis, "and carries a Tom Moore in his waistcoat-pocket."
There came a sound of singing outside—a man's voice, musical, with an indescribably jaunty clip to the words:
And with the song still in the air, the singer came through the shadow of the porch and stood in the doorway—a man tall and well set-up, in black riding-clothes, cap in hand, who saluted the two with his crop, and as he did so a jewel gleamed in the handle, showing him to be something of a dandy.
Standing in the doorway, the lights from the candelabra on his face and the sunset at his back, one noticed on the instant his great freedom of movement as of one good with the foils. His hair was dark, and his eyes, deep-set and luminous as a child's, looked straight at the world through lashes so long they made a mistiness of shadow. He had the pallor of the Spanish Creole found frequently in the south of Ireland folk. His mouth was straight, the upper lip a bit fuller than the under one, as is the case when intellect predominates, and his hair was of a singularly dull and wavy black. But set these and many more things down, and the charm of him has not been written at all, for the words give no hint of his bearing, his impertinent and charming familiarity, the surety of touch, the right word, and the ready concession.
"I thought the evening was beautiful till I saw you, madam," he said, with a sweeping salute. "I kiss your hand—with emotion." There was a slight pause here as he regarded Mrs. Ravenel with open admiration. "And thank you for the beautiful verses, asking that at some soon date you send more of the flowers of your imagination to bind around the gloomy brow of Dermott McDermott."
It was the McDermott way, this. A kiss on the hand and a compliment to Madam Ravenel; a compliment and a kiss on the lips to Peggy of the Poplars; but in his heart it was to the deil with all women—save one—for he regarded them as emotional liars to be sported with and forgotten.
As Mrs. Ravenel presented to each other these two men whose lives were to be interwoven for so many years, they shook hands cordially enough, but there was both criticism and appraisement in the first glance each took of the other.
The contrast between them, as they stood with clasped hands, did not pass unnoted by Mrs. Ravenel. The black hair, olive skin, the bluer than blue eyes of Dermott, as he stood in the light of the doorway; his alert, theatric, dominating personality; his superb self-consciousness; the decision of manner which comes only to those who have achieved, seemed to her prejudiced gaze admirable in themselves, but more admirable as a foil to the warm brown of Frank's hair, to the poetic gray of his eyes, his apparent self-depreciation, his easy acceptances, and his elegant reluctance to obtrude on others either his views or his personality.
Perhaps it was the prescience of coming trouble between them which caused a noticeable pause after the introduction—a pause which Dermott courteously broke.
"So this is the son," he said. "Sure," he went on, comparing them, "ye've a right to be proud of each other! Ye make a fine couple, the two of you. And now"—putting his cap, gloves, and riding-whip on the window-ledge—"I'll have coffee if you'll offer it. Let me"—taking some sugar—"eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow," he laughed—"why, to-morrow I may have talked myself to death!"
Frank rose from his chair and stood by the chimney, regarding the Irishman as one might have viewed a performer in a play, realizing to the full what his mother had meant by the "charm of McDermott," for it was a thing none could deny, for the subtle Celt complimented the ones to whom he spoke by an approving and admiring attention, and conveyed the impression that the roads of his life had but led him to their feet.
"To tell the truth," McDermott continued, noting and by no means displeased by Frank's scrutiny, "I had heard ye were home, Mr. Ravenel, and came early to see you with a purpose—two purposes, I might say. First, I wanted to talk to you concerning Patrick Dulany, the overseer whom I got for your mother last year. Ye've not see him yet?"
"I arrived only last night, Mr. McDermott," Francis answered.
"True, I'd forgotten. It's a strange life Patrick's had, and a sad one. He's of my own college in Dublin, but a good dozen years older than I. 'Twas in India I knew him first. He's one of the Black Dulanys of the North, and we fought side by side at Ramazan. What a time! What a time! In the famous charge up the river, when we turned, I lost my horse, and in that backward plunge my life was not worth taking. While I was lying there half dead and helpless, this Dulany got from his old gray, flung me across his saddle, and carried me nine miles back to the camp. Judge if I love him!"
Mr. McDermott looked from the window with the fixed gaze of one struggling with unshed tears.
"The next month he was ordered home, and soon after fell the bitter business of the marriage in Italy. I stood up with him. She was the most beautiful creature I have ever seen—save one; and a voice—God! I heard her sing in Milan once. The king was there; the opera 'La Favorita.' She was sent for to the royal box. We had the horses out of her carriage and dragged it home ourselves. What a night it was! What a night it was!"
McDermott paused as in an ecstasy of remembrance.
"What was her name?" Francis asked.
"Ah, that"—he threw out his hand with a dramatic gesture—"'tis a thing I swore never to mention. 'Tis a fancy of Dulany's to let it die in silence."
"And she left him?" Mrs. Ravenel's voice was full of sympathy as she spoke.
"For another!" Dermott made a dramatic pause, relishing his climaxes. "And then she died."
"So, for his daughter's sake"—there was a curious hesitancy in his speech just here, but he carried it off jauntily—"his daughter, a primrose girl and the love of my life, I've come to ask that you be a bit lenient with him, Mr. Ravenel, at the times he has taken a drop too much, as your lady mother has been in the year past. I think you'll find him able to manage, for, in spite of his infirmity, black and white fall under his spell alike."
"If Frank has a fault, Mr. McDermott, which I do not think he has, it's over-generosity. You need have no fear for your friend," Mrs. Ravenel said, proudly, putting her hand on Frank's shoulder.
As her son turned to kiss the slender fingers, Dermott McDermott regarded the two curiously.
"You're fortunate in having a son of twenty—" He hesitated.
"Of twenty-five," Francis finished for him.
"—so devoted to you, madam. Ye're twenty-five—coming or going?" he inquired, with a laugh.
"On my last birthday—April."
An odd light shone in McDermott's eyes for a second before he said, with a bow:
"Neither of ye look it; I can assure you of that. Well," he continued, reaching for his cap and whip, "I must be going. Ye've found already, haven't ye, Ravenel, that the sound of my own voice is the music of heaven to my ears?" And then, as though trying to recollect: "I think I said it was at Ramazan Dulany and I fought together?"
Francis nodded.
"God," McDermott cried, his face illumined, his eyes glowing, "I wish it had been Waterloo! I've always carried a bruised spirit that I didn't fight at Waterloo."
"Your loss is our gain, Mr. McDermott," Francis answered, with a smile. "You'd scarce be here to tell it if you had."
"And that's maybe true," Dermott said, pausing by the doorway to put on his gloves. "But I'd rather have fought at Waterloo, even if I were dead now, so that I could tell you exactly how it felt—There"—he broke his speech with a laugh—"I caught myself on the way to an Irish bull.
"Oh! Mr. Ravenel," he called back suddenly, as though the thought had just come to him, "I've been waiting your coming to have a talk with you—a business talk—but not to-night." He waved the matter aside with a gay, outward movement of the hands. "Sometime at your pleasure." Again the eyes of the two met, and this time each measured the other more openly than before.
"I shall be glad to see you at any time, Mr. McDermott," Frank answered, his words courteous enough, but his eyes lacking warmth; and the intuitive Celt realized that in Frank he had met one whom he had failed either to bewilder or to charm.
"Madam!" he cried, saluting. "Mr. Francis Ravenel, delightful son of a delightful mother! The top of the evening to both of ye." And with a considered manner he made a stage exit, and Frank and Madam Ravenel heard the gay voice—
coming back with the clatter of a horse's hoofs through the fading sunlight over the dew of the daisies.
"Well," said Mrs. Ravenel, her eyes dancing with merry light, "isn't he delightful?"
"Delightful!" Frank repeated. "Is he? I wonder. Shrewd, cool-headed, cruel, I think—subtle as well."
"Nonsense," Mrs. Ravenel interrupted, with a smile which might not have been so mirthful had she seen at that moment the man of whom she spoke.
Near the north gate McDermott had brought his horse suddenly to a walk. There was no longer gayety in his manner or his face. The merry light had left his eyes, and in its place shone a gleam, steady and cold, as only the eye of the intellectual Irish can be.
"And so that is the son! An unco man for the lassies, like his father before him." His eyelids drew together as he spoke. "Handsome, too—with a knowledge of life. It's a pity!" he said. "It's a pity! But he may not interfere. If he does, well—even if he does, the gods are with the Irish!"