ROUND ANVIL ROCK
_A ROMANCE_
BY
NANCY HUSTON BANKS
AUTHOR OF "OLDFIELD"
1903
[Illustration: "The Angelus was pealing from the bell of the little
log chapel."]
TO MY FATHER
A PREFACE
In weaving a romance round a real rock and through actual events, this
tale has taken no great liberty with fact. It has, indeed, claimed the
freedom of fiction only in drawing certain localities and incidents
somewhat closer together than they were in reality. And it has done this
notably in but three instances: by allowing the Wilderness Road to seem
nearer the Ohio River than it really was; by anticipating the
establishment of the Sisters of Charity; and by disregarding the
tradition that Philip Alston had gone from the region of Cedar House
before the time of the story, and that he died elsewhere. These
deviations are all rather slight, yet they are, nevertheless, essential
to any faithful description of the country, the time, and the people,
which this tale tries to describe. The Wilderness Road - everywhere - came
so close to the life of the whole country that no true story of the time
can ever be told apart from it. The Sisters of Charity were established
so early and did so much in the making of Kentucky, that a few months
earlier in coming to one locality or a few years later in reaching
another, cannot make their noble work any less vitally a part of every
tale of the wilderness. The influence of Philip Alston over the country
in which he lived, lasted so much longer than his life, and the precise
date and manner of his death are go uncertain, that his romantic career
must always remain inseparably interwoven with all the romance of
southern Kentucky. And it is for these reasons that this story of nearly
a hundred years ago, has thus claimed a few of the many privileges of
fiction.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE GIRL AND THE BOY
II. THE HOUSE OF CEDAR
III. "PHILIP ALSTON, GENTLEMAN"
IV. THE NIGHT RIDE
V. ON THE WILDERNESS ROAD
VI. THE CAMP-MEETING
VII. A MORNING IN CEDAR HOUSE
VIII. THE LOG TEMPLE OF JUSTICE
IX. PAUL'S FIRST VISIT TO RUTH
X. FATHER ORIN AND TOBY MEET TOMMY DYE
XI. THE DANCE IN THE FOREST
XII. THE EVE OF ALL SOULS'
XIII. SEEING WITH DIFFERENT EYES
XIV. A SPIRITUAL CENTAUR
XV. THE WEB THAT SEEMED TO BE WOVEN
XVI. LOVE'S TOUCHSTONE
XVII. THE ONCOMING OF THE STORM
XVIII. THE GENTLEST ARE THE BRAVEST
XIX. UNDER THE HUNTER'S MOON
XX. BALANCING LIFE AND DEATH
XXI. THE EAGLE IN THE DOVE'S NEST
XXII. "A COMET'S GLARE FORETOLD THIS SAD EVENT"
XXIII. LOVE CLAIMS HIS OWN
XXIV. OLD LOVE'S STRIVING WITH YOUNG LOVE
XXV. THE PASSING OF PHILIP ALSTON
ILLUSTRATIONS
"The Angelus was pealing from the bell of the little log chapel"
"A dark, confused ... writhing mass of humanity"
"'I wanted to shake the hand of a man like you'"
Father Orin and Toby
"For she also was riding a great race"
"She was making an aeolian harp"
ROUND ANVIL ROCK
I
THE GIRL AND THE BOY
The Beautiful River grows very wide in making its great bend around
western Kentucky. On the other side, its shores are low for many miles,
but well guarded by giant cottonwoods. These spectral trees stand close
to its brink and stretch their phantom arms far over its broad waters,
as if perpetually warding off the vast floods that rush down from the
North.
But the floods are to be feared only in the winter or spring, never in
the summer or autumn. And nearly a hundred years ago, when the river's
shores were bound throughout their great length by primeval forests,
there was less reason to fear at any season. So that on a day of October
in the year eighteen hundred and eleven, the mighty stream lay safely
within its deep bounds flowing quietly on its way to join the Father of
Waters.
So gently it went that there was scarcely a ripple to break its silvery
surface. It seemed indeed hardly to move, reflecting the shadowy
cottonwoods like a long, clear, curving mirror which was dimmed only by
the breath of the approaching dusk. Out in the current beyond the
shadows of the trees, there still lingered a faint glimmer of the
afterglow's pale gold. But the red glory of the west was dying behind
the whitening cottonwoods and beyond the dense dark forest - reaching on
and on to the seeming end of the earth - a billowing sea of ever
deepening green. The last bright gleam of golden light was passing away
on the white sail of a little ship which was just turning the distant
bend, where the darkening sky bent low to meet the darkened wilderness.
The night was creeping from the woods to the waters as softly as the
wild creatures crept to the river's brim to drink before sleeping. The
still air was lightly stirred now and then by rushing wings, as the
myriad paroquets settled among the shadowy branches. The soft murmuring
of the reeds that fringed the shores told where the waterfowl had
already found resting-places. The swaying of the cane-brakes - near and
far - signalled the secret movements of the wingless wild things which
had only stealth to guard them against the cruelty of nature and against
one another. The heaviest waves of cane near the great Shawnee Crossing
might have followed a timid red deer. For the Shawnees had vanished from
their town on the other side of the Ohio. Warriors and women and
children - all were suddenly and strangely gone; there was not even a
canoe left to rock among the rushes. The swifter, rougher waving of the
cane farther off may have been in the wake of a bold gray wolf. The
howling of wolves came from the distance with the occasional gusts of
wind, and as often as the wolves howled, a mysterious, melancholy
booming sounded from the deeper shadows along the shores. It was an
uneasy response from the trumpeter swans, resting like some wonderful
silver-white lilies on the quiet bosom of the dark river.
A great river has all the sea's charm and much of its mystery and
sadness. The boy standing on the Kentucky shore was under this spell as
he listened to these sounds of nature at nightfall on the Ohio, and
watched the majestic sweep of its waters - unfettered and
unsullied - through the boundless and unbroken forests. Yet he turned
eagerly to listen to another sound that came from human-kind. It was the
wild music of the boatman's horn winding its way back from the little
ship, now far away and rounding the dusky bend. Partly flying and partly
floating, it stole softly up the shadowed river. The melody echoed from
the misty Kentucky hills, lingered under the overhanging trees, rambled
through the sighing cane-brakes, loitered among the murmuring
rushes - thus growing ever fainter, sweeter, wilder, sadder, as it came.
He did not know why this sound of the boatman's horn always touched him
so keenly and moved him so deeply. He could not have told why his eyes
grew strangely dim as he heard it now, or why a strange tightening came
around his heart. He was but an ignorant lad of the woods. It was not
for him to know that these few notes - so few, so simple, so artlessly
blown by a rude boatman - touched the deep fountain of the soul, loosing
the mighty torrent pent up in every human breast. Pity, tenderness,
yearning, the struggle and the triumph of life, - the boy felt everything
and all unknowingly, but with quivering sensibility. For he was not
merely an ignorant lad; he was also one of those who are set apart
throughout their lives to feel many things which they are never
permitted to comprehend.
When the last echo of the boatman's horn had melted among the darkling
hills, he turned as instinctively as a sun-worshipper faces the east and
drank in another musical refrain. The Angelus was pealing faintly from
the bell of the little log chapel far up the river, hidden among the
trees. The faith which it betokened was not his own faith, nor the faith
of those with whom he lived, but the beauty and sweetness of the token
appealed to him none the less. How beautiful, how sweet it was! As it
thus came drifting down with the river's deepening shadows, he thought
of the little band of Sisters - angels of charity - kneeling under that
rough roof; those brave gentlewomen of high birth and delicate breeding
who were come with the very first to take an heroic part in the making
of Kentucky and, so doing, in the winning of the whole West. As the boy
thought of them with a swelling heart, - for they had been kind to
him, - it seemed that they were braver than the hunters, more courageous
than the soldiers. Listening to the appeal of the Angelus stealing so
tenderly through the twilight, with the strain of poetry that was in him
thrilling in response, he felt that the prayers then going up must fill
the cruel wilderness with holy incense; that the coming of these gentle
Sisters must subdue the very wild beasts, as the presence of the lovely
martyrs subdued the lions of old.
"Ah, David! David!" cried a gay young voice behind him. "Dreaming
again - with your eyes wide open. And seeing visions, too, no doubt."
He turned with a guilty start and looked up at Ruth. She was standing
near by but higher on the river bank, and her slender white form was
half concealed by the drooping foliage of a young willow tree. There was
something about Ruth herself that always made him think of a young
willow with every graceful wand in bloom. And now - as nearly
always - there was a flutter of soft whiteness about her, for the day was
as warm as mid-summer. He could not have told what it was that she wore,
but her fluttering white garments might have been woven of the mists
training over the hills, so ethereal they looked, seen through the
golden green of the delicate willow leaves that were still gilded by
the afterglow which had vanished from the shadowed river. Her smiling
face could not have been more radiant had the sunlight shone full upon
it. The dusk of evening seemed always lingering under the long curling
lashes that made her blue eyes so dark, and her hair was as black at
midday as at midnight. So that now - when she shook her head at the
boy - a wonderful long, thick, silky lock escaped its fastenings, and the
wind caught it and spun it like silk into the finest blue-black floss.
"Yes, sir, you've been dreaming again! You needn't pretend you were
thinking - you don't know how to think. Thinking is not romantic enough.
I have been here watching you for a long time, and I know just how
romantic the dreams are that you have been dreaming. I could tell by the
way you turned, - this way and that, - looking up and down the river. It
always bewitches you when the sun goes and the shadows come. I knew I
should find you here, just like this; and I came on purpose to wake and
scold you."
She pretended to draw her pretty brow into a frown, but she could not
help smiling.
"Seriously, dear, you must stop dreaming. It is a dreadful thing to be a
dreamer in a new country. State makers should all be wide-awake workers.
You are out of place here; as Uncle Philip Alston says - "
"Then why did he put me here?" the boy burst out bitterly.
"David!" she cried in wounded reproach, "how can you? It hurts me to
hear you say things like that. I can't bear to hear any one say anything
against him - I love him so. And from you - who owe him almost as much as
I do - "
The tears were very near. But she was a little angry, too, and her blue
eyes flashed.
"No; no one owes him so much - as myself. He couldn't have been so
good - no one ever could be so good to any one else as he has always been
to me. Still" - softening suddenly, for she was fond of the boy, and
something in his sensitive face went to her tender heart - "think, David,
dear, we owe him everything we have, - our names, our home, our clothes,
our education, our very lives. We must never for a moment forget that it
was he who found us all alone - you in a cabin on the Wilderness Road and
me in a boat at Duff's Fort - and brought us in his own arms to Cedar
House. And you know as well as I do that he would have given us a home
in his own house if it had not been so rough and bare a place, a mere
camp. And then there was no woman in it to take care of us, and we were
only little mites of babies - poor, crying, helpless morsels of humanity.
Where do you think we came from, David? I wonder and wonder and wonder!"
wistfully, with her gaze on the darkening river.
It was an old question, and one that they had been asking themselves
and one another and every one, over and over, ever since they had been
old enough to think. The short story which Philip Alston had told was
all that he or any one knew or ever was to know. The boy silently shook
his head. The girl went on: -
"Sometimes I am sorry that we couldn't live in his house. You would have
understood him better and have loved him more - as he deserves. It is
only that you don't really know each other," she said gently. "And then
I should like to do something for him - something to cheer him - who does
everything for me. It must be very sad to be alone and old. It grieves
me to see him riding away to that desolate cabin, especially on stormy
nights. But he never will let me come to his house, though I beg and
beg. He says it is too rough, and that too many strange men are coming
and going on business."
"Yes; too many strange men on very strange business."
She did not hear or notice what he said, because the sound of horses'
feet echoing behind them just at that moment caused her to turn her
head. Two horsemen were riding along the river bank, but they were a
long way off and about turning into the forest path as her gaze fell
upon them. She stood still, silently looking after them till they
disappeared among the trees.
"Father Orin and Toby will get home before dark to-night. That is
something uncommon," she said with a smile.
Toby was the priest's horse, but no one ever spoke of the one without
thinking of the other; and then, Toby's was a distinct and widely
recognized personality.
"But who is the stranger with them, David? Oh, I remember! It must be
the new doctor, - the young doctor who has lately come and who is curing
the Cold Plague. The Sisters told me. They said that he and Father Orin
often visited the sick together and were already great friends. How tall
he is - even taller than Father Orin, and broader shouldered. I should
like to see his face. And how straight he sits in the saddle. You would
expect a man who holds himself so to carry a lance and tilt fearlessly
at everything that he thought was wrong."
She turned, quickly tossing the willow branches aside and laughing
gayly. "There now, that will set you off thinking of your knights again!
But you must not. Truly, you must not. For it is quite true, dear; you
are a dreamer, a poet. You do indeed belong to the Arcadian Hills. You
should be there now, playing a gentle shepherd's pipe and herding his
peaceful flocks. And instead - alas!" - she looked at him in perplexity
which was partly real and partly assumed - "instead you are here in this
awful wilderness, carrying a rifle longer and heavier than yourself, and
trying to pretend that you like to kill wild beasts, or can endure to
hurt any living thing."
David said nothing; there seemed to be no response for him to make. When
a well-grown youth of eighteen or thereabouts is spoken to by a girl
near his own age as he had just been spoken to by Ruth, he rarely finds
anything to say. No words could do justice to what he feels. And there
is nothing for him to do either, unless it be to take refuge in a
dignified silence which disdains the slightest notice of the offence.
This was what David resorted to, and, bending down, he calmly and
quietly raised his forgotten rifle from the ground to his shoulder. He
did it very slowly and impressively, however, in the hope that Ruth
might realize the fact that he had killed the buck whose huge horns made
the rifle's rest on his cabin walls. But she saw and realized only that
he was wounded, and instantly darted toward him like a swallow. She
caught his rigid rifle arm and clung to it, looking up in his set face.
Her blue eyes were already filling with tears while the smile was still
on her lips. That was Ruth's way; her smiles and tears were even closer
together than most women's are; she was nearly always quiveringly poised
between gayety and sadness; like a living sunbeam continually glancing
across life's shadows.
"What is it, David, dear?" she pleaded, with her sweet lips close to his
ear. "What foolish thing have I said? You must know - whatever it
was - that it was all in fun. Why, I wouldn't have you different, dear,
if I could! I couldn't love you so much if you were not just what you
are. And yet," sighing, "it might be better for you."
She laid her head against his shoulder and drew closer to him in that
soft little nestling way of hers. David looked straight over the lovely
head, keeping his grim gaze as high as he could. He knew how it would be
if his stern gray eyes were to meet Ruth's wet blue ones. He was still a
boy, but trying to be a man - and beginning to understand. No man with
his heart in the right place could hold out against her pretty coaxing.
It was sweet enough to wile the very birds out of the trees. It made no
difference that he had been used to her wiles from babyhood up. To be
used to Ruth's ways only made them harder to resist. No stranger could
possibly have foreseen his defeat as clearly as David foresaw his at the
moment that she started toward him. But self-respect required him to
stand firm as long as possible, although he felt the strength going out
of his rifle arm under her clinging touch. She felt it going, too, and
began to smile through her tears. And then, sure of her victory, she
threw caution to the winds - as older and wiser women have done too
openly in vanquishing stronger and more masterful men. She let him see
that she knew she had conquered, which is always a fatal mistake on the
part of a woman toward a man. Smiling and dimpling, she put up her hand
and patted his cheek - precisely as if he had been a child.
The boy shrunk as if the caress had been a touch of fire. He broke away
and strode off up the hillside with his longest, manliest stride. This
humiliation was past bearing or forgiving. He could have forgiven being
called a dreamer - a useless drone - among the men of clear heads and
strong hands who had already wrested a great state from the wilderness,
and who, through this conquest, were destined to become the immortal
founders of the Empire of the West. He could have overlooked being
spoken to like a child by a girl who might be younger than himself for
all he or she knew to the contrary - though this would have been harder.
He might even have forgiven that pat on his cheek which was downy with
beard, had he been either younger or older. But as it was - well, the
matter may safely be left to the sympathy of the man who remembers the
most sensitive time of his own youth; that trying period when he feels
himself to be no longer a boy and nobody else considers him a man.
David did not know where he was going or what he meant to do. He was
blindly striding up the river bank away from Ruth, fairly aflame with
the determination to do something - anything - to prove his manhood. For
nothing ever makes a boy resolve quite so suddenly and firmly to become
a man instantly as to be treated by a girl as he had been by Ruth. Had
the most desperate danger then come in David's way, he would have hailed
and hazarded it with delight. But he could not think of anything to
overwhelm her with just at that moment, and so he could only stride on
in helpless, angry silence. Ruth flew after him as if her thin white
skirts had been strong, swift wings. She overtook him before he had gone
very far, and clung to him again more than ever like some beautiful
white spirit of the woods wreathed in mist, with her soft blown garments
and her softer blown hair. She merely wound herself around him at first,
breathless and panting. But as soon as she caught her breath the
coaxing, the laughing, and the crying came all together. David kept from
looking down as long as he could, but his pace slackened and his arm
again relaxed. Finally - taken off guard - he glanced at the face so near
his breast. The dusk could not dim its beauty and only made it more
lovely. No more resistance was possible for him - or for any man or
boy - who saw Ruth as she looked then. David's big rough hand was now
surrendered meekly enough to the quick clasp of her little fingers,
and - forgetting all the daring deeds that he meant to do - he was led
like any lamb up the hill to the open door of Cedar House.
II
THE HOUSE OF CEDAR
So far as they knew, there was no tie of blood or relationship binding
them to the kind people of Cedar House. Yet it was the only home that
they could remember and very dear to them both.
It was a great square of rough, dark logs, and seemed now, seen through
the uncertain light, to stand in the centre of a shadowy hamlet, so many
smaller cabins were clustered around it. The custom of the country was
to add cabin after cabin as the family outgrew the original log house.
The instinct of safety, the love of kindred, and the longing for society
in the perilous loneliness of the wilderness held these first
Kentuckians very close together. So that as their own villages thus grew
around them and only their own dwelt near them, they naturally became as
clannish as their descendants have been ever since.
The cabin nearest Cedar House contained two rooms, and was used by its
master, Judge Knox, for his own bedroom and law office. There was a
still larger cabin somewhat more distant from the main building, which
was intended for the use of his nephew, William Pressley, on the
marriage of that young lawyer to Ruth. But the wedding was some time off
yet, having been set for Christmas Eve, and the cabin which was to
welcome the bride from Cedar House was not quite complete. The smallest
and the oldest cabin was David's. The long black line of cabins
crouching under the hillside where the shadows were deepest, marked the
quarters of the slaves, - a dark storm-cloud already settling heavily on
the fair horizon of the new state.
Cedar House itself was the grandest of its time in all that country.
Built entirely of huge red cedar logs it was two stories in height, the
first house of more than one story standing on the shores of the
southern Ohio. Its roof was the wonder and envy of the whole region for
many years. The shingles were of black walnut, elegantly rounded at the
butt-ends. They were fastened on with solid walnut pegs driven in holes
bored through both the shingles and the laths with a brace and a bit.
For there was not a nail in Cedar House from its firm foundation to its
fine roof. Even the hinges and the latch of the wide front door were
made of wood. The judge often mentioned this fact with much pride, and
never failed to add that the leathern latch-string always hung outside.
But he was still prouder of the massive, towering chimney of Cedar
House, and with good reason. The other houses thinly scattered through
the wilderness had humble chimneys of sticks covered with clay. The
chimney of Cedar House was of rough stone - of one hundred wagon loads,
as the judge boasted - which had been hauled with great difficulty over a
long distance, because there was none near by.
On the wide hearth of this great chimney a fire was always burning. No
matter what the season or the weather might be, there was always a
solemn ceremony around the hearth when the fire was renewed, at the
beginning and the close of every day all the year round. In winter it
was a glorious bonfire consuming great logs. In summer it was the merest
glimmer that could hold a flickering spark. Between winter and summer,
as on this mild October evening, a bright flame sometimes danced gayly
behind the big brass andirons, while all the windows and doors were wide
open. But through cold and heat, and burning high or low, the fire was
never entirely forgotten, never quite permitted to go out. Thus ever
alight it burned like a sacred flame on the altar of home.
Streaming from the doors and windows that night, it gave the youth and
the maiden a cheerful welcome as they came up the darkening hillside.
Lamplight also began to glimmer, and candles flitted here and there
before the windows and door, borne by the dark shapes of the servants
who were laying the table for supper. The main room of Cedar House
opened directly upon the river front; and when brightly lighted, it
could be distinctly seen from without. Ruth and David paused on the
threshold, still unconsciously holding one another's hands, and looked
in.
There were five persons in the room, three men and two women, and they
were all members of the household with the exception of Philip Alston,
the white-haired gentleman, whose appearance bore no other mark of age.
And he also might have been considered as one of the family, since he
had been coming to the house daily for many years. He came usually to
see Ruth, but of late he had found it necessary to see William Pressley
more often; and they were talking eagerly and in a low tone, rather
apart, when the boy and girl paused to see and hear what was taking
place within the great room. William Pressley sat in the easiest chair
in the warmest corner, close to the hearth. There are some men - and a
few women - who always take the softest seat in the best place, and they
do it so naturally that no one ever thinks of their doing anything else
or expects them to sit elsewhere. William Pressley was one of these
persons. In the next easiest chair, on the other side of the hearth, was
his aunt, the widow Broadnax, whose short, broad, shapeless, inert
figure was lying rather than sitting almost buried in a heap of
cushions. This lady was the sister of the judge and the half-sister of
the other lady, Miss Penelope Knox, - the thin, nervous, restless little
old woman, - who was fidgeting back and forth between the hearth and the
doorway leading to the distant kitchen. The relationship of these two
ladies to one another, and the difference in their relationship to the
head of Cedar House, caused much dissension in the household, and gave
rise to certain domestic complications which always rose when least
expected.
The fire had been freshly kindled with small twigs of the sugar maple,
that priceless tree often standing fifty to an acre in the wilderness,
and giving the pioneers their best fire-wood, their coolest shade, and
their sweetest food. Vivid blue sparks were still flashing among the
little white stars of the gray moss on the big backlog. From the blazing
ends of the log there came the soft, airy music and the faint, sweet
scent of bubbling sap. This main room of Cedar House was very large,
almost vast, taking up the whole lower floor. It was the dining room as
well as the sitting room; and when some grand occasion arose, it served
even as a drawing-room, and did it handsomely, too. This great room of
Cedar House always reminded David of the ancient halls in "The Famous
History of Montilion," a romance of chivalry from which most of his
ideas of life were taken, and upon which most of his ideals of living
were formed. Surely, he thought, the castle of the "Knight of the
Oracle" could not be grander than this great room of Cedar House.
The rich dark wood of its walls and floor - all rudely smoothed with the
broadaxe and the whipsaw - hung overhead in massive beams. From these
low, blackened timbers there swung many antique lamps, splendid enough
for a palace and strangely out of place in a log house of the
wilderness. On the rough walls there were also large sconces of
burnished silver but poorly filled with tallow candles. In the bare
spaces between these silver sconces were the heads of wild animals
mingled with many rifles, both old and new, and other arms of the
hunter. Over the tall mantelpiece there were crossed two untarnished
swords which had been worn by the judge's father in the Revolution. On
the red cedar of the floor, polished by wear and rubbing, there lay the
skins of wild beasts, together with costly foreign rugs. The same
strange mixture of rudeness and refinement was to be seen everywhere
throughout the room. The table standing in the centre of the floor,
ready for the evening meal, was made of unplaned boards, rudely put
together by the unskilled hands of the backwoods. Yet it was set with
the finest china, the rarest glass, and the richest silver that the
greatest skill of the old world could supply. The chairs placed around
the table were made of unpainted wood from the forest, with seats woven
out of the coarse rushes from the river. And there, between the front
windows, stood Ruth's piano, the first in that part of the wilderness,
and as fine as the finest of its day anywhere.
It is true that something like the same confusion of luxury and wildness
was becoming more or less common throughout the country. The wain trains
which had lately followed the packhorse trains over the
Alleghanies - with the widening of the Wilderness Road - were already
bringing many comforts and even luxuries to the cabins of the well-to-do
settlers. But nothing like those which were fetched constantly to Cedar
House ever came to any other household; and it was not the family who
caused them to be brought there. For while the judge was a man of wealth
for his time and place, and able to give his family greater comfort than
his poorer neighbors could afford, he was far from having the means,
much less the taste and culture, to gather such costly, beautiful, and
rare things as were gathered together in Cedar House. It was through
Philip Alston that everything of this kind had come. It was he who had
chosen everything and paid for it, and ordered it fetched over the
mountains from Virginia or up the river from France or Spain - all as
gifts from him to Ruth. It was natural enough that he should give her
whatever he wished her to have, and there was no reason why she should
not accept any and everything that he gave. She was held by him and by
every one as his adopted daughter. He had no children of his own, no
relations of any degree so far as any one knew, and he was known to be
generous and believed to be very rich. Indeed no one thought much about
his gifts to Ruth; they had long since become a matter of course, a part
of the everyday life of Cedar House. They had begun with Ruth's coming
more than seventeen years before. As a baby she had been rocked in a
cradle such as never before had been seen in the wilderness, - a very gem
of wonderful carving and inlaid work from Spain. As a little child she
had been dressed - as no little one of the wild wood ever had been
before - in the finest fabrics and the daintiest needlework from the
looms and convents of France. Very strange things may become familiar
through use. The simple people of Cedar House and their rude neighbors
were well used to all this. They had seen the beautiful blue-eyed baby
grow to be a more beautiful child, and the child to a most beautiful
maiden, and always surrounded by the greatest refinement and luxury that
love and means could bring into the wilderness. Naturally enough they
now found nothing to wonder at, in the daily presence of this radiant
young figure among them.
It was only for an instant that the girl and boy stood thus unseen on
the threshold of Cedar House, looking into the great room. Philip Alston
saw them almost at once. He had been watching and waiting for Ruth, as
he always was when she was out of his sight even for a moment. He sprang
up, quickly and alertly, like a strong young man, and went to meet her
with his gallant air. She held up her cheek smilingly; he bent and
kissed it, and taking her hand with his grand bow, led her across the
room. The judge and his nephew also arose, as they always did when she
came in or went out. The judge did this unconsciously, without thinking,
and scarcely knowing that he did do it; for he was a plain man, rather
awkward and very absent-minded, and deeply absorbed in the study of his
profession. William Pressley did it with deliberate intention and
self-consciousness, as he did everything that he deemed fitting. It was
his nature to give grave thought to the least thing that he said or did.
It was his sincere conviction that the smallest matter affecting himself
was of infinitely greater importance than the greatest that could
possibly concern any one else. There are plenty of people who believe
this as sincerely as he believed it, but there are few who show the
belief with his candor. When he now stood up to place a chair for Ruth
beside his own, he did the simple service as if the critical eyes of the
world had been upon him. And his manner was so consciously correct that
no one observed that the chair which he gave her was not so comfortable
as his own. He was uncommonly good-looking, also, and tall and shapely,
yet there was something about his full figure - that vague,
indescribable something - which unmistakably marks the lack of virility
in mind or body, no matter how large or handsome a man may be. He stood
for a moment after Ruth was seated, and then, seeing that Philip Alston
was about to lift a candle-stand which was heaped with parcels, he went
to aid him, and the two men together set the little table before her.
She looked at it with soft, excited cries of surprise and delight,
instantly divining that the unopened parcels and sealed boxes contained
more of the gifts which her foster-father was constantly lavishing upon
her. He smiled down at her beaming face and dancing eyes, and then
taking out his pocket-knife he cut the cords and removed the covers of
the boxes. As the wrappings fell away, there was a shimmer of dazzling
tissues, silver and gold.
"Oh! oh!" she cried.
"Just a few pretty trifles, my dear," he said. "You like them?"
"Like them!"
Repeating his words she sprang up, and running round the candle-stand,
stood on the very tips of her toes so that she might throw her arms
about his neck. He bent his head to meet her upturned face, and if ever
tenderness shone in a man's pale, grave face, it shone then in his. If
ever love - pure and unselfish - beamed from a man's eyes, it was beaming
now from those looking down in the girl's face. His tender gaze
followed her fondly as she went back to the candle-stand and began to
examine each article again more than once and with lingering and growing
delight. She found new beauties every moment, and pointed them out to
the three men and the boy who were now gathered around her. She called
the ladies also, over and over, but they did not come, although they
cast many glances at the candle-stand.
Miss Penelope was engaged in making the coffee for supper; and while she
did not consider the making of the coffee for supper quite so vital a
matter as the making of the coffee for breakfast, she still could not
think of leaving the hearth under any inducement so long as the
coffee-pot sat on its trivet above the glowing coals. The widow Broadnax
stirred among her cushions once or twice, as if almost on the point of
trying to get out of her chair. She was fonder of finery than her
half-sister was, and she would have liked very much to see these
beautiful things nearer. But she was still fonder of her own ease than
of finery, and it was really a great deal of trouble to get out of her
deep, broad low chair. And then she never moved or took her eyes off her
half-sister while that energetic lady was engaged in making the coffee.
Knowing the ladies' ways, Ruth did not expect them to come. She was
quite satisfied to have the men share her pleasure in the presents.
They were looking at her and not at the gifts lying heaped on the
candle-stand, but she did not notice that. She gave the judge a
priceless piece of lace to hold. He took it with the awkward, helpless
embarrassment of a manly man handling a woman's delicate
belongings, - the awkwardness that goes straight to a woman's heart,
because she sees and feels its true reverence - a reverence just as plain
and just as sweet to the simplest country girl as to the wisest woman of
the world. The perception of it is a matter of intuition, not one of
experience. The least experienced woman instantly distrusts the man who
can touch her garments with ease or composure. Ruth's gay young voice
broke into a sweet chime of delighted laughter when the judge seized the
airy bit of lace as if it had been the heaviest and hottest of crowbars.
She laughed again when she looked at his face. He had an odd trick of
lifting one of his eyebrows very high and at an acute angle when
perplexed or ill at ease. This eccentric left eyebrow - now quite
wedge-shaped - had gone up almost to the edge of his tousled gray hair.
Ruth patted his great clumsy hands with her little deft ones.
"Well, I'll have to take to the woods, if there's no other way of
escape," said the judge, making his greatest threat.
"You dear!" she said, running her arm through his and giving it a little
squeeze. "That's right. Hold it tight - be careful, or it will break.
Here, William," piling the young man's arms full of delicately tinted
gauze, "this is a sunset cloud. And these," casting lengths of exquisite
tissue over the boy's shoulder, "these are the mists of the dawn,
David, - all silvery white and golden rose and jewelled blue. But - oh!
oh! - these are the loveliest of all! A pair of slippers in
orange-blossom kid, spangled with silver! Look at them! Just look,
everybody!"
Holding them in her hand she ran round the table again to throw her arms
about Philip Alston's neck the second time, like a happy, excited child.
The little white slippers went up with her arms and touched his cheek.
And then he drew them down, and clasping her slender wrists, held her
out before him and looked at her with fond, smiling eyes.
"I don't believe that the Empress Josephine has any prettier slippers
than those," he said. "I ordered the prettiest and the finest in Paris."
"Who fetched all these things?" the judge broke in, with something like
a sudden realization of the number and the value of the gifts.
"Oh, a friend of mine," responded Philip Alston, carelessly, and without
turning his head, - "a friend who has many ships constantly going and
coming between New Orleans and France. He orders anything I wish; and
when it comes to him, he sends it on to me by the first flatboat
cordelled up the river."
"What is his name?" asked the judge, with a persistence very uncommon in
him.
Philip Alston turned now and glanced at him with an easy, almost
bantering smile.
"I don't like to tell you his name, because you - with a good many other
honestly mistaken people - are most unjustly prejudiced against him. And
then you know well enough that I am speaking of my respected and trusted
friend, Monsieur Jean Lafitte."
The judge dropped the lace as if it had burnt his hand. He went back to
his seat by the window in silence. He sat down heavily and looked at
Philip Alston in perplexity, rubbing his great shock of rough grizzled
hair the wrong way as he always did when worried. His thoughts were
plainly to be read on his open, rugged face. This liking of Philip