"Not yet," Eloise answered with a sob, "but I may be in time, or queer,
like all the Harrises,--mother and her mother and 'old Miss.' We are all
Harrises, and,--and,--oh, Jack, I know what a Cracker is now; mother is
one; I am one, and it is all so dreadful; and mother nobody, perhaps. I
can't bear it, and you must not marry me."
"I shall marry you," Jack said, folding her in his arms. "Do you think I
care who your family are, or how queer they are? You'll never be queer.
I'll shield you so carefully from every care that you can't even spell
the word."
He took her hands and made her look at him, while he kissed her lips
and said, "It is you I want, with all the Harrises and Crackers in
Christendom thrown in, if necessary. Are you satisfied?"
He knew she was, and was kissing her again when Jake appeared with the
trunk, which he said had held Miss Dory's clothes when she went to
Georgia. There was a musty odor about it when he opened it, and the few
papers inside were yellow with age.
"Dis yer is de reader Miss Dory use' to go over so much," Jake said,
handing the book to Eloise, who turned its worn pages reverently, as if
touching the hands of the dead girl, who, Jake said, "had rassled with
the big words an' de no 'count pieces. She liked de po'try, an' got by
heart 'bout de boy on de burnin' deck, but de breakin' waves floo'd her,
'case 'twan't no story like Cassy-by-anker."
He pointed the latter poem out to Eloise, who said, "Will you give me
this book?"
Jake hesitated before he replied, "He wanted it, the Colonel, an' I tole
him no, but you're different. I'll think about it."
Mr. Mason had returned by this time, and with Jack was looking at the
bundle of letters tied with a satin ribbon which Jake said Miss Dory had
taken from her white dress, the one he believed she was married in, as
it was her bestest. There were four letters and a paper which did not
seem to be a letter, and which slipped to the floor at Eloise's feet as
Jack untied the ribbon. There was also a small envelope containing a
card with "James Crompton" upon it, the one Mandy Ann had carried her
mistress on a china plate, and which poor Dora had kept as a souvenir of
that visit. With the card were the remains of what must have been a
beautiful rose. The petals were brown and crumbling to dust, but still
gave out a faint perfume, which Eloise detected. While she was looking
at these mementos of a past, Jack was running his eyes over the almost
illegible directions on the letters, making out "Miss Lucy Brown,
Atlanta, Ga."
"That doesn't help us much," he said to Mr. Mason. "Brown is a common
name, and the Atlanta before the war was not like the Atlanta of
to-day."
"Perhaps something inside will give a cue," Mr. Mason suggested, and
Jack opened one of the letters carefully, for it was nearly torn apart.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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