June, 1859

MRS. ALBION was still awake when the door bell rang; but Tessie always slept soundly, so Mrs. Albion rose and went into the upper hall and called: "Tessie! Tessie!"

"Yes, ma'am, I'se a-comin'!"

Mrs. Albion, herself in darkness, saw presently below her the candle's gleam. The door bell clanged again, with an angry impatience. That must be Tony. No one else would come at this hour. Tessie, in a bright-flowered wrapper that was snug to the splitting point, appeared in the lower hall. Her tight black pigtails stiff with indignation at this midnight rousing, her candle sputtering angrily, she trudged slap-footed to the door and with her hand on the bolt challenged this midnight caller.

"Who dere?"

"Mr. Currain, you black slut! Open up!"

The servant's tone changed to appeasement. "Yassuh! Yassuh!" Looking up over her shoulder while she turned the key, she muttered a low warning. "Hit's Mistuh Currain, ma'am."

Her mistress at the stair head nodded resentful assent. "Light the gas." Then as Tessie opened the door: "Tony, what in the world?"

Tessie hooded the flickering candle against the night air, closed the door behind him, held the candle flame to the gas jet.

"Too late, Nell?" His tone was a challenge.

"Oh no," she said wearily, "I'll make myself presentable. Tell Tessie — anything you want."

She turned toward her room, wondering why he had come, puzzled and uneasy. In the hall below she heard him give his orders. "Tessie, bring a bottle of the old Madeira. And carry it as if it were a sick baby! If you cloud it, I'll cut you into strips and fry the strips."

"Yassuh! Yassuh! Must be a big evenin', you going to open one o' dem last two bottles."

"Only two left? Why, damn your hide, I brought six dozen from Great Oak eight years ago. You've been at them, you black 'scallion'!"

"Nawsuh, not me!" Mrs. Albion, ready to receive him, returning to the stair head, saw him cut at Tessie sharply with his light cane; and Tessie chuckled with fright, her fat flesh shaking. "Nawsuh, I ain't never tetch 'em!"

"Lying wench! Well, if there are only two, I'll have both."

"Yassuh!"

Tessie departed, and Mrs. Albion waited while he came up the stairs. A small woman, slenderly rounded, looking less than her forty-odd years, she was beautiful not so much because of any single attribute — unless it were her loosed hair in a rich cascade across her shoulder — as from a harmony of features, voice, and manner. Anthony Currain, gaunt and bony, with a dark mustache and a spike of beard to frame his wide loose mouth, now in his fifties and a little stooped as tall men may be, bowed over her hand, then kissed her cheek. She spoke in sharp repulsion.

"Tony, I won't have you using tobacco before you come to me!"

"I didn't expect to come." In the small pleasant room where a stick of lightwood freshly laid on coals still smouldering waked into crackling flame, he walked toward the hearth to rid himself of the source of his offense. "Hot for a fire," he said.

"I find it chilly." There was a hard anger in her. He never came at such an hour as this unless he had had too much to drink, and the fumes of liquor mingled with the reek of tobacco on his breath.

"Well, I'm hot," he insisted. "I walked from Merrihay's."

"Luck with you?" She knew what his answer would be. He was always a losing gambler.

"No."

"So you're in a bad humor?" She seated herself, the bright fire between them. "They had the luck, but I see you had the brandy?"

"Did I? I hardly know. I told Tessie to bring the old Madeira."

"So late?"

"Rather I'd go?" His tone was derisive.

"Don't sulk!" She smiled lightly. "But really, Tony, coming at such an hour! Suppose you'd surprised me! If this is to become a habit, I shall have to practice discretion."

He considered her with a thoughtful eye, and the firelight touched her hair. "You know, you've grown more beautiful every year. I wonder how life would have gone for us if we had married."

"Not so well, I think," she suggested. "This way, with sometimes weeks when we do not meet, it has been easier to endure each other." Then, at Tessie's discreet knock. "Come." The servant bore the dusty bottles, each in its basket, reverently; on the laden tray were glasses, and a dish of pecans already shelled. "I'll call you if we want anything, Tessie," said Mrs. Albion.

"Yes, ma'am." Tessie departed, and he nibbled nuts to rid himself of the taste of tobacco, took one of the bottles, ceremoniously opened it.

"My father put this down in 1825," he reflected, "the year before he died; thirty, thirty-four years ago. He used to import it in the cask, let it ripen in the hot attic before old Mose bottled it." Gently, he filled the glasses, gave one to her, raised his own. "To the good years behind us, Nell."

That was a phrase faintly ominous. She watched him warily. "And to those to come," she said, and sipped the wine.

He made a grunting sound, staring at the fire. "You don't know my family, Nell," he muttered; and an icy finger touched her throat. What was in his mind?

"Of course I do," she protested. "After all, Trav's my son-in-law. And I've seen Mrs. Dewain and Mrs. Streean times enough. I don't know your other brother."

"Faunt? Faunt's the best of us, he and Cinda."

"And I know Mr. Streean," she reminded him, and smiled at the memory. "He brought you and that handsome son of his to call on me once; remember? You were horribly embarrassed."

"Damned awkward business. He asked if I knew you, and I'd have denied it; but I couldn't well say I didn't know my own brother's mother-in-law. So I said I hadn't known you were in Richmond."

"Thus damning me, once and for all."

"Why?" He looked at her in dull interest.

"But obviously, if your family and your brother's wife's mother weren't on terms! Don't be an innocent, my dear!" She added: "Darrell Streean has been a devoted caller ever since. Of course he saw the truth about you and me at once, and I suppose that made him think me fair game."

"Insulting young blackguard!"

"Oh, no woman in her forties is ever insulted by the flattery of a dashing youngster in his teens — no matter how frankly dishonorable his intentions."

"Darrell was at Merrihay's tonight," he commented. "Tried to borrow from me. He takes after his father. Worthless rascal."

"You dislike Mr. Streean?" He made a scornful sound and she said provokingly: "He calls quite often. He was here only a week ago, with three other gentlemen, discussing their eternal politics, growing noisy over their own opinions — and my brandy."

"Streean's a scoundrel — but he lacks courage to follow his bent." Tony laughed shortly. "You know, it was I who introduced him to Tilda, but it never occurred to me she'd marry him! She's had time to be sorry."

She said in a light amusement: "He and the gentlemen he brings here — well, I always air the curtains after they've gone."

He stared at the flames. Outside the quiet room a belated...