Franklin felt keenly enough that he was at disadvantage, but no man may know what there is in the heart of a girl. To Mary Ellen there seemed to be three ways open. She might address this man bitterly, or haughtily, or humorously. The latter course might have been most deadly of all, had it not been tempered with a certain chivalrousness which abode in Mary Ellen's heart. After all, thought she, here was a man who was one of their few acquaintances in this strange, wild country. It might be that he was not an ill sort of man at heart, and by all means he was less impossible of manner than any other she had seen here. She had heard that the men of a womanless country were sometimes suddenly disconcerted by the appearance of womankind upon their horizon. There was a certain quality about this man which, after all, left him distinctly within the classification of gentleman. Moreover, it would be an ill thing for her to leave a sore heart on the first day of her acquaintance in this town, with which her fortunes were now apparently to be so intimately connected.
Mary Ellen turned at length and seated herself near the window. The light of which many women are afraid, the cross-light of double windows on the morning after a night of dancing, had no terrors for her. Her eye was clear, her skin fresh, her shoulders undrooping. Franklin from his seat opposite gazed eagerly at this glorious young being. From his standpoint there were but few preliminaries to be carried on. This was the design, the scheme. This was what life had had in store for him, and why should he hesitate to enter into possession? Why should he delay to speak that which was foremost in his soul, which assuredly at that very moment must be the foremost concern in all the interlocking universe of worlds? After his fashion he had gone straight. He could not understand the sickening thought that he did not arrive, that his assertion did not convince, that his desire did not impinge.
Mary Ellen turned toward him slowly at length, and so far from seeming serious, her features bore the traces of a smile. "Do you know," said she, "I think I heard of a stage-driver — wasn't it somewhere out West — who was taking a school-teacher from the railroad to the schoolhouse — and he — well, that is to say — "
"He said things — "
"Yes, that is it. He said things, you know. Now, he had never seen the school-teacher before."
"Yes, I have heard of that story," said Franklin, smiling as he recalled the somewhat different story of Sam and the waiter girl. "I don't just recollect all about it."
"It seems to me that the stage-driver said something — er, like — maybe he said it was 'like forgotten music' to him."
Franklin coloured. "The story was an absurdity, like many others about the West," he said. "But," he brightened, "the stage-driver had never seen the school-teacher before."
"I don't quite understand," said Mary Ellen coldly. "In my country it was not customary for gentlemen to tell ladies when they met for the first time that it was 'like a strain of forgotten music' — not the first time." And in spite of herself she now laughed freely, feeling her feminine advantage and somewhat exulting in spite of herself to see that even here upon the frontier there was opportunity for the employment of woman's ancient craft.
"Music never forgotten, then!" said Franklin impetuously. "This is at least not the first time we have met." In any ordinary duel of small talk this had not been so bad an attack, yet now the results were something which neither could have foreseen. To the mind of the girl the words were shocking, rude, brutal. They brought up again the whole scene of the battlefield. They recalled a music which was indeed not forgotten — the music of that procession which walked across the heart of Louisburg on that far-off fatal day. She shuddered, and upon her face there fell the shadow of an habitual sadness.
"You have spoken of this before, Captain Franklin," said she, "and if what you say is true, and if indeed you did see me — there — at that place — I can see no significance in that, except the lesson that the world is a very small one. I have no recollection of meeting you. But, Captain Franklin, had we ever really met, and if you really cared to bring up some pleasant thought about the meeting, you surely would never recall the fact that you met me upon that day!"
Franklin felt his heart stop. He looked aside, his face paling as the even tones went on:
"That was the day of all my life the saddest, the most terrible. I have been trying ever since then to forget it. I dare not think of it. It was the day when — when my life ended — when I lost everything, everything on earth I had."
Franklin turned in mute protest, but she continued:
"Because of that day," said she bitterly, "to which you referred as though it were a curious or pleasant thought, since you say you were there at that time — because of that very day I was left adrift in the world, every hope and every comfort gone. Because of Louisburg — why, this — Ellisville! This is the result of that day! And you refer to it with eagerness."
Poor Franklin groaned at this, but thought of no right words to say until ten hours afterward, which is mostly the human way. "I know — I could have known," he blundered — "I should not be so rude as to suppose that — ah, it was only you that I remembered! The war is past and gone, The world, as you say, is very small. It was only that I was glad — "
"Ah, sir," said Mary Ellen, and her voice now held a plaintiveness which was the stronger from the droop of the tenderly curving lips — "ah, sir, but you must remember! To lose your relatives, even in a war for right and principle — and the South was right!" (this with a flash of the eye late pensive) — "that is hard enough. But for me it was not one thing or another; it was the sum of a thousand misfortunes. I wonder that I am alive. It seems to me as though I had been in a dream for a long, long time. It is no wonder that those of us left alive went away, anywhere, as far as we could, that we gave up our country — that we came even here!" She waved a hand at the brown monotony visible through the window.
"You blame me as though it were personal!" broke in Franklin; but she ignored him.
"We, our family," she went on, "had lived there for a dozen generations. You say the world is small. It is indeed too small for a family again to take root which has been torn up as ours has been. My father, my mother, my two brothers, nearly every relative I had, killed in the war or by the war — our home destroyed — our property taken by first one army and then the other — you should not wonder if I am bitter! It was the field of Louisburg which cost me everything. I lost all — all — on that day which you wish me to remember. You wish me to remember that you saw me then, that I perhaps saw you. Why, sir, if you wished me to hate you, you could do no better — and I do not wish to hate any one. I wish to have as many friends as we may, here in this new country; but for remembering — why, I can remember nothing else, day or night, but Louisburg!"
"You stood so," said Franklin, doggedly and fatuously, "just as you did last night. You were leaning on the arm of your mother — "
Mary Ellen's eyes dilated. "It was not my mother," said she.
"A friend?" said Franklin, feelingly as he might.
"The mother of a friend," said Mary Ellen, straightening up and speaking with effort. And all the meaning of her words struck Franklin fully as though a dart had sunk home in his bosom.
"We were seeking for my friend, her son," said Mary Ellen. "I — Captain Franklin, I know of no reason why we should speak of such things at all, but it was my — I was to have been married to the man for whom we were seeking, and whom we found! That is what Louisburg means to me. It means this frontier town, a new, rude life for us. It means meeting you all here — as we are glad and proud to do, sir — but first of all it means — that!"
Franklin bowed his head between his hands and half groaned over the pain which he had cost. Then slowly and crushingly his own hurt came home to him. Every fibre of his being, which had been exultingly crying out in triumph at the finding of this missing friend — every fibre so keenly strung — now snapped and sprang back at rag ends. In his brain he could feel the parting one by one of the strings which but now sang in unison. Discord, darkness, dismay, sat on all the world.