"Why, bless the child!" said old Jerome, crackling his paper loudly; "of
course he is. I raised him myself."
"He wouldn't write anything to anybody that wasn't exactly - I mean that
everybody couldn't know and read, would he?"
"I'd just like to see him try it," said uncle, tearing a handful from
his newspaper. "Why, what - "
"Read this note he just sent me, uncle, and see if you think it's all
right and proper. You see, I don't know much about city people and their
ways."
Old Jerome threw his paper down and set both his feet upon it. He took
Gilbert's note and fiercely perused it twice, and then a third time.
"Why, child," said he, "you had me almost excited, although I was sure
of that boy. He's a duplicate of his father, and he was a gilt-edged
diamond. He only asks if you and Barbara will be ready at four o'clock
this afternoon for an automobile drive over to Long Island. I don't see
anything to criticise in it except the stationery. I always did hate
that shade of blue."
"Would it be all right to go?" asked Nevada, eagerly.
"Yes, yes, yes, child; of course. Why not? Still, it pleases me to see
you so careful and candid. Go, by all means."
"I didn't know," said Nevada, demurely. "I thought I'd ask you. Couldn't
you go with us, uncle?"
"I? No, no, no, no! I've ridden once in a car that boy was driving.
Never again! But it's entirely proper for you and Barbara to go. Yes,
yes. But I will not. No, no, no, no!"
Nevada flew to the door, and said to the maid:
"You bet we'll go. I'll answer for Miss Barbara. Tell the boy to say
to Mr. Warren, 'You bet we'll go.'"
"Nevada," called old Jerome, "pardon me, my dear, but wouldn't it be
as well to send him a note in reply? Just a line would do."
"No, I won't bother about that," said Nevada, gayly. "Gilbert will
understand - he always does. I never rode in an automobile in my life;
but I've paddled a canoe down Little Devil River through the Lost Horse
Cañon, and if it's any livelier than that I'd like to know!"
III
Two months are supposed to have elapsed.
Barbara sat in the study of the hundred-thousand-dollar house. It was a
good place for her. Many places are provided in the world where men and
women may repair for the purpose of extricating themselves from divers
difficulties. There are cloisters, wailing-places, watering-places,
confessionals, hermitages, lawyer's offices, beauty parlors, air-ships,
and studies; and the greatest of these are studies.
It usually takes a hypotenuse a long time to discover that it is the
longest side of a triangle. But it's a long line that has no turning.
Barbara was alone. Uncle Jerome and Nevada had gone to the theatre.
Barbara had not cared to go. She wanted to stay at home and study in
the study. If you, miss, were a stunning New York girl, and saw every
day that a brown, ingenuous Western witch was getting hobbles and a
lasso on the young man you wanted for yourself, you, too, would lose
taste for the oxidized-silver setting of a musical comedy.
Barbara sat by the quartered-oak library table. Her right arm rested
upon the table, and her dextral fingers nervously manipulated a sealed
letter. The letter was addressed to Nevada Warren; and in the upper
left-hand corner of the envelope was Gilbert's little gold palette.
It had been delivered at nine o'clock, after Nevada had left.
Barbara would have given her pearl necklace to know what the letter
contained; but she could not open and read it by the aid of steam, or
a pen-handle, or a hair-pin, or any of the generally approved methods,
because her position in society forbade such an act. She had tried to
read some of the lines of the letter by holding the envelope up to a
strong light and pressing it hard against the paper, but Gilbert had
too good a taste in stationery to make that possible.
At eleven-thirty the theatre-goers returned. It was a delicious winter
night. Even so far as from the cab to the door they were powdered
thickly with the big flakes downpouring diagonally from the east. Old
Jerome growled good-naturedly about villainous cab service and blockaded
streets. Nevada, colored like a rose, with sapphire eyes, babbled of
the stormy nights in the mountains around dad's cabin. During all
these wintry apostrophes, Barbara, cold at heart, sawed wood - the only
appropriate thing she could think of to do.
Old Jerome went immediately up-stairs to hot-water-bottles and quinine.
Nevada fluttered into the study, the only cheerfully lighted room,
subsided into an arm-chair, and, while at the interminable task of
unbuttoning her elbow gloves, gave oral testimony as to the demerits
of the "show."
"Yes, I think Mr. Fields is really amusing - sometimes," said Barbara.
"Here is a letter for you, dear, that came by special delivery just
after you had gone."
"Who is it from?" asked Nevada, tugging at a button.
"Well, really," said Barbara, with a smile, "I can only guess. The
envelope has that queer little thing in one corner that Gilbert
calls a palette, but which looks to me rather like a gilt heart on a
school-girl's valentine."
"I wonder what he's writing to me about" remarked Nevada, listlessly.
"We're all alike," said Barbara; "all women. We try to find out what is
in a letter by studying the postmark. As a last resort we use scissors,
and read it from the bottom upward. Here it is."
She made a motion as if to toss the letter across the table to Nevada.
"Great catamounts!" exclaimed Nevada. "These centre-fire buttons are a
nuisance. I'd rather wear buckskins. Oh, Barbara, please shuck the hide
off that letter and read it. It'll be midnight before I get these gloves
off!"
"Why, dear, you don't want me to open Gilbert's letter to you? It's for
you, and you wouldn't wish any one else to read it, of course!"
Nevada raised her steady, calm, sapphire eyes from her gloves.
"Nobody writes me anything that everybody mightn't read," she said.
"Go on, Barbara. Maybe Gilbert wants us to go out in his car again
to-morrow."
Curiosity can do more things than kill a cat; and if emotions, well
recognized as feminine, are inimical to feline life, then jealousy would
soon leave the whole world catless. Barbara opened the letter, with an
indulgent, slightly bored air.
"Well, dear," said she, "I'll read it if you want me to."
She slit the envelope, and read the missive with swift-travelling eyes;
read it again, and cast a quick, shrewd glance at Nevada, who, for
the time, seemed to consider gloves as the world of her interest, and
letters from rising artists as no more than messages from Mars.
For a quarter of a minute Barbara looked at Nevada with a strange
steadfastness; and then a smile so small that it widened her mouth only
the sixteenth part of an inch, and narrowed her eyes no more than a
twentieth, flashed like an inspired thought across her face.
Since the beginning no woman has been a mystery to another woman. Swift
as light travels, each penetrates the heart and mind of another, sifts
her sister's words of their cunningest disguises, reads her most hidden
desires, and plucks the sophistry from her wiliest talk like hairs from
a comb, twiddling them sardonically between her thumb and fingers before
letting them float away on the breezes of fundamental doubt. Long ago
Eve's son rang the door-bell of the family residence in Paradise Park,
bearing a strange lady on his arm, whom he introduced. Eve took her
daughter-in-law aside and lifted a classic eyebrow.
"The Land of Nod," said the bride, languidly flirting the leaf of a
palm. "I suppose you've been there, of course?"
"Not lately," said Eve, absolutely unstaggered. "Don't you think the
apple-sauce they serve over there is execrable? I rather like that
mulberry-leaf tunic effect, dear; but, of course, the real fig goods
are not to be had over there. Come over behind this lilac-bush while
the gentlemen split a celery tonic. I think the caterpillar-holes have
made your dress open a little in the back."
So, then and there - according to the records - was the alliance formed
by the only two who's-who ladies in the world. Then it was agreed that
woman should forever remain as clear as a pane of glass - though glass
was yet to be discovered - to other women, and that she should palm
herself off on man as a mystery.
Barbara seemed to hesitate.
"Really, Nevada," she said, with a little show of embarrassment, "you
shouldn't have insisted on my opening this. I - I'm sure it wasn't meant
for any one else to know."
Nevada forgot her gloves for a moment.
"Then read it aloud," she said. "Since you've already read it, what's
the difference? If Mr. Warren has written to me something that any one
else oughtn't to know, that is all the more reason why everybody should
know it."
"Well," said Barbara, "this is what it says: 'Dearest Nevada - Come to
my studio at twelve o'clock to-night. Do not fail.'" Barbara rose and
dropped the note in Nevada's lap. "I'm awfully sorry," she said, "that
I knew. It isn't like Gilbert. There must be some mistake. Just consider
that I am ignorant of it, will you, dear? I must go up-stairs now, I
have such a headache. I'm sure I don't understand the note. Perhaps
Gilbert has been dining too well, and will explain. Good night!"
IV
Nevada tiptoed to the hall, and heard Barbara's door close upstairs.
The bronze clock in the study told the hour of twelve was fifteen
minutes away. She ran swiftly to the front door, and let herself out
into the snow-storm. Gilbert Warren's studio was six squares away.
By aerial ferry the white, silent forces of the storm attacked the city
from beyond the sullen East River. Already the snow lay a foot deep
on the pavements, the drifts heaping themselves like scaling-ladders
against the walls of the besieged town. The Avenue was as quiet as a
street in Pompeii. Cabs now and then skimmed past like white-winged
gulls over a moonlit ocean; and less frequent motor-cars - sustaining the
comparison - hissed through the foaming waves like submarine boats on
their jocund, perilous journeys.
Nevada plunged like a wind-driven storm-petrel on her way. She looked
up at the ragged sierras of cloud-capped buildings that rose above the
streets, shaded by the night lights and the congealed vapors to gray,
drab, ashen, lavender, dun, and cerulean tints. They were so like the
wintry mountains of her Western home that she felt a satisfaction such
as the hundred-thousand-dollar house had seldom brought her.
A policeman caused her to waver on a corner, just by his eye and weight.
"Hello, Mabel!" said he. "Kind of late for you to be out, ain't it?"
"I - I am just going to the drug store," said Nevada, hurrying past him.
The excuse serves as a passport for the most sophisticated. Does it
prove that woman never progresses, or that she sprang from Adam's rib,
full-fledged in intellect and wiles?
Turning eastward, the direct blast cut down Nevada's speed one-half. She
made zigzag tracks in the snow; but she was as tough as a piñon sapling,
and bowed to it as gracefully. Suddenly the studio-building loomed
before her, a familiar landmark, like a cliff above some well-remembered
cañon. The haunt of business and its hostile neighbor, art, was darkened
and silent. The elevator stopped at ten.
Up eight flights of Stygian stairs Nevada climbed, and rapped firmly
at the door numbered "89." She had been there many times before, with
Barbara and Uncle Jerome.
Gilbert opened the door. He had a crayon pencil in one hand, a green
shade over his eyes, and a pipe in his mouth. The pipe dropped to the
floor.
"Am I late?" asked Nevada. "I came as quick as I could. Uncle and me
were at the theatre this evening. Here I am, Gilbert!"
Gilbert did a Pygmalion-and-Galatea act. He changed from a statue of
stupefaction to a young man with a problem to tackle. He admitted
Nevada, got a whisk-broom, and began to brush the snow from her clothes.
A great lamp, with a green shade, hung over an easel, where the artist
had been sketching in crayon.
"You wanted me," said Nevada simply, "and I came. You said so in your
letter. What did you send for me for?"
"You read my letter?" inquired Gilbert, sparring for wind.
"Barbara read it to me. I saw it afterward. It said: 'Come to my studio
at twelve to-night, and do not fail.' I thought you were sick, of
course, but you don't seem to be."
"Aha!" said Gilbert irrelevantly. "I'll tell you why I asked you to
come, Nevada. I want you to marry me immediately - to-night. What's a
little snow-storm? Will you do it?"
"You might have noticed that I would, long ago," said Nevada. "And I'm
rather stuck on the snow-storm idea, myself. I surely would hate one of
these flowery church noon-weddings. Gilbert, I didn't know you had grit
enough to propose it this way. Let's shock 'em - it's our funeral, ain't
it?"
"You bet!" said Gilbert. "Where did I hear that expression?" he added
to himself. "Wait a minute, Nevada; I want to do a little 'phoning."
He shut himself in a little dressing-room, and called upon the
lightnings of the heavens - condensed into unromantic numbers and
districts.
"That you, Jack? You confounded sleepyhead! Yes, wake up; this is me - or
I - oh, bother the difference in grammar! I'm going to be married right
away. Yes! Wake up your sister - don't answer me back; bring her along,
too - you _must_! Remind Agnes of the time I saved her from drowning in
Lake Ronkonkoma - I know it's caddish to refer to it, but she must come
with you. Yes. Nevada is here, waiting. We've been engaged quite a
while. Some opposition among the relatives, you know, and we have to
pull it off this way. We're waiting here for you. Don't let Agnes
out-talk you - bring her! You will? Good old boy! I'll order a carriage
to call for you, double-quick time. Confound you, Jack, you're all
right!"
Gilbert returned to the room where Nevada waited.
"My old friend, Jack Peyton, and his sister were to have been here at
a quarter to twelve," he explained; "but Jack is so confoundedly slow.
I've just 'phoned them to hurry. They'll be here in a few minutes. I'm
the happiest man in the world, Nevada! What did you do with the letter
I sent you to-day?"
"I've got it cinched here," said Nevada, pulling it out from beneath
her opera-cloak.
Gilbert drew the letter from the envelope and looked it over carefully.
Then he looked at Nevada thoughtfully.
"Didn't you think it rather queer that I should ask you to come to my
studio at midnight?" he asked.
"Why, no," said Nevada, rounding her eyes. "Not if you needed me.
Out West, when a pal sends you a hurry call - ain't that what you say
here? - we get there first and talk about it after the row is over. And
it's usually snowing there, too, when things happen. So I didn't mind."
Gilbert rushed into another room, and came back burdened with overcoats
warranted to turn wind, rain, or snow.
"Put this raincoat on," he said, holding it for her. "We have a quarter
of a mile to go. Old Jack and his sister will be here in a few minutes."
He began to struggle into a heavy coat. "Oh, Nevada," he said, "just
look at the headlines on the front page of that evening paper on the
table, will you? It's about your section of the West, and I know it will
interest you."
He waited a full minute, pretending to find trouble in the getting on of
his overcoat, and then turned. Nevada had not moved. She was looking at
him with strange and pensive directness. Her cheeks had a flush on them
beyond the color that had been contributed by the wind and snow; but her
eyes were steady.
"I was going to tell you," she said, "anyhow, before you - before
we - before - well, before anything. Dad never gave me a day of schooling.
I never learned to read or write a darned word. Now if - "
Pounding their uncertain way up-stairs, the feet of Jack, the somnolent,
and Agnes, the grateful, were heard.
V
When Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Warren were spinning softly homeward in a
closed carriage, after the ceremony, Gilbert said:
"Nevada, would you really like to know what I wrote you in the letter
that you received to-night?"
"Fire away!" said his bride.
"Word for word," said Gilbert, "it was this: 'My dear Miss Warren - You
were right about the flower. It was a hydrangea, and not a lilac.'"
"All right," said Nevada. "But let's forget it. The joke's on Barbara,
anyway!"
THIMBLE, THIMBLE
These are the directions for finding the office of Carteret & Carteret,
Mill Supplies and Leather Belting:
You follow the Broadway trail down until you pass the Crosstown Line,
the Bread Line, and the Dead Line, and come to the Big Cañons of the
Moneygrubber Tribe. Then you turn to the left, to the right, dodge a
push-cart and the tongue of a two-ton four-horse dray and hop, skip,
and jump to a granite ledge on the side of a twenty-one-story synthetic
mountain of stone and iron. In the twelfth story is the office of
Carteret & Carteret. The factory where they make the mill supplies and
leather belting is in Brooklyn. Those commodities - to say nothing of
Brooklyn - not being of interest to you, let us hold the incidents within
the confines of a one-act, one-scene play, thereby lessening the toil
of the reader and the expenditure of the publisher. So, if you have the
courage to face four pages of type and Carteret & Carteret's office boy,
Percival, you shall sit on a varnished chair in the inner office and
peep at the little comedy of the Old Nigger Man, the Hunting-Case Watch,
and the Open-Faced Question - mostly borrowed from the late Mr. Frank
Stockton, as you will conclude.
First, biography (but pared to the quick) must intervene. I am for the
inverted sugar-coated quinine pill - the bitter on the outside.
The Carterets were, or was (Columbia College professors please rule), an
old Virginia family. Long time ago the gentlemen of the family had worn
lace ruffles and carried tinless foils and owned plantations and had
slaves to burn. But the war had greatly reduced their holdings. (Of
course you can perceive at once that this flavor has been shoplifted
from Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith, in spite of the "et" after "Carter.") Well,
anyhow:
In digging up the Carteret history I shall not take you farther back
than the year 1620. The two original American Carterets came over in
that year, but by different means of transportation. One brother, named
John, came in the _Mayflower_ and became a Pilgrim Father. You've seen his
picture on the covers of the Thanksgiving magazines, hunting turkeys in
the deep snow with a blunderbuss. Blandford Carteret, the other brother,
crossed the pond in his own brigantine, landed on the Virginia coast,
and became an F.F.V. John became distinguished for piety and shrewdness
in business; Blandford for his pride, juleps; marksmanship, and vast
slave-cultivated plantations.
Then came the Civil War. (I must condense this historical
interpolation.) Stonewall Jackson was shot; Lee surrendered; Grant
toured the world; cotton went to nine cents; Old Crow whiskey and Jim
Crow cars were invented; the Seventy-ninth Massachusetts Volunteers
returned to the Ninety-seventh Alabama Zouaves the battle flag of
Lundy's Lane which they bought at a second-hand store in Chelsea, kept
by a man named Skzchnzski; Georgia sent the President a sixty-pound
watermelon - and that brings us up to the time when the story begins.
My! but that was sparring for an opening! I really must brush op on my
Aristotle.
The Yankee Carterets went into business in New York long before the war.
Their house, as far as Leather Belting and Mill Supplies was concerned,
was as musty and arrogant and solid as one of those old East India
tea-importing concerns that you read about in Dickens. There were some
rumors of a war behind its counters, but not enough to affect the
business.
During and after the war, Blandford Carteret, F.F.V., lost his
plantations, juleps, marksmanship, and life. He bequeathed little
more than his pride to his surviving family. So it came to pass that
Blandford Carteret, the Fifth, aged fifteen, was invited by the
leather-and-mill-supplies branch of that name to come North and learn
business instead of hunting foxes and boasting of the glory of his
fathers on the reduced acres of his impoverished family. The boy jumped
at the chance; and, at the age of twenty-five, sat in the office of the
firm equal partner with John, the Fifth, of the blunderbuss-and-turkey
branch. Here the story begins again.
The young men were about the same age, smooth of face, alert, easy of
manner, and with an air that promised mental and physical quickness.
They were razored, blue-serged, straw-hatted, and pearl stick-pinned
like other young New Yorkers who might be millionaires or bill clerks.
One afternoon at four o'clock, in the private office of the firm,
Blandford Carteret opened a letter that a clerk had just brought to his
desk. After reading it, he chuckled audibly for nearly a minute. John
looked around from his desk inquiringly.
"It's from mother," said Blandford. "I'll read you the funny part of
it. She tells me all the neighborhood news first, of course, and then
cautions me against getting my feet wet and musical comedies. After that
come vital statistics about calves and pigs and an estimate of the wheat
crop. And now I'll quote some:
"'And what do you think! Old Uncle Jake, who was seventy-six last
Wednesday, must go travelling. Nothing would do but he must go to New
York and see his "young Marster Blandford." Old as he is, he has a deal
of common sense, so I've let him go. I couldn't refuse him - he seemed to
have concentrated all his hopes and desires into this one adventure into
the wide world. You know he was born on the plantation, and has never
been ten miles away from it in his life. And he was your father's body
servant during the war, and has been always a faithful vassal and
servant of the family. He has often seen the gold watch - the watch that
was your father's and your father's father's. I told him it was to be
yours, And he begged me to allow him to take it to you and to put it
into your hands himself.
"'So he has it, carefully enclosed in a buck-skin case, and is bringing
it to you with all the pride and importance of a king's messenger. I
gave him money for the round trip and for a two weeks' stay in the city.
I wish you would see to it that he gets comfortable quarters - Jake
won't need much looking after - he's able to take care of himself. But
I have read in the papers that African bishops and colored potentates
generally have much trouble in obtaining food and lodging in the Yankee
metropolis. That may be all right; but I don't see why the best hotel
there shouldn't take Jake in. Still, I suppose it's a rule.
"'I gave him full directions about finding you, and packed his valise
myself. You won't have to bother with him; but I do hope you'll see that
he is made comfortable. Take the watch that he brings you - it's almost a
decoration. It has been worn by true Carterets, and there isn't a stain
upon it nor a false movement of the wheels. Bringing it to you is the
crowning joy of old Jake's life. I wanted him to have that little outing
and that happiness before it is too late. You have often heard us talk
about how Jake, pretty badly wounded himself, crawled through the
reddened grass at Chancellorsville to where your father lay with the
bullet in his dear heart, and took the watch from his pocket to keep it
from the "Yanks."
"'So, my son, when the old man comes consider him as a frail but worthy
messenger from the old-time life and home.
"'You have been so long away from home and so long among the people
that we have always regarded as aliens that I'm not sure that Jake will
know you when he sees you. But Jake has a keen perception, and I rather
believe that he will know a Virginia Carteret at sight. I can't conceive
that even ten years in Yankee-land could change a boy of mine. Anyhow,
I'm sure you will know Jake. I put eighteen collars in his valise. If
he should have to buy others, he wears a number 15½. Please see that he
gets the right ones. He will be no trouble to you at all.
"'If you are not too busy, I'd like for you to find him a place to board
where they have white-meal corn-bread, and try to keep him from taking
his shoes off in your office or on the street. His right foot swells a
little, and he likes to be comfortable.
"'If you can spare the time, count his handkerchiefs when they come back
from the wash. I bought him a dozen new ones before he left. He should
be there about the time this letter reaches you. I told him to go
straight to your office when he arrives.'"
As soon as Blandford had finished the reading of this, something
happened (as there should happen in stories and must happen on the
stage).
Percival, the office boy, with his air of despising the world's output
of mill supplies and leather belting, came in to announce that a colored
gentleman was outside to see Mr. Blandford Carteret.
"Bring him in," said Blandford, rising.
John Carteret swung around in his chair and said to Percival: "Ask him
to wait a few minutes outside. We'll let you know when to bring him in."
Then he turned to his cousin with one of those broad, slow smiles that
was an inheritance of all the Carterets, and said:
"Bland, I've always had a consuming curiosity to understand the
differences that you haughty Southerners believe to exist between 'you
all' and the people of the North. Of course, I know that you consider
yourselves made out of finer clay and look upon Adam as only a
collateral branch of your ancestry; but I don't know why. I never could
understand the differences between us."
"Well, John," said Blandford, laughing, "what you don't understand about
it is just the difference, of course. I suppose it was the feudal way
in which we lived that gave us our lordly baronial airs and feeling of
superiority."
"But you are not feudal, now," went on John. "Since we licked you
and stole your cotton and mules you've had to go to work just as we
'damyankees,' as you call us, have always been doing. And you're just as
proud and exclusive and upper-classy as you were before the war. So it
wasn't your money that caused it."
"Maybe it was the climate," said Blandford, lightly, "or maybe our
negroes spoiled us. I'll call old Jake in, now. I'll be glad to see the
old villain again."
"Wait just a moment," said John. "I've got a little theory I want to
test. You and I are pretty much alike in our general appearance. Old
Jake hasn't seen you since you were fifteen. Let's have him in and play
fair and see which of us gets the watch. The old darky surely ought to
be able to pick out his 'young marster' without any trouble. The alleged
aristocratic superiority of a 'reb' ought to be visible to him at once.
He couldn't make the mistake of handing over the timepiece to a Yankee,
of course. The loser buys the dinner this evening and two dozen 15½
collars for Jake. Is it a go?"
Blandford agreed heartily. Percival was summoned, and told to usher the
"colored gentleman" in.
Uncle Jake stepped inside the private office cautiously. He was a little
old man, as black as soot, wrinkled and bald except for a fringe of
white wool, cut decorously short, that ran over his ears and around his
head. There was nothing of the stage "uncle" about him: his black suit
nearly fitted him; his shoes shone, and his straw hat was banded with a
gaudy ribbon. In his right hand he carried something carefully concealed
by his closed fingers.
Uncle Jake stopped a few steps from the door. Two young men sat in their
revolving desk-chairs ten feet apart and looked at him in friendly
silence. His gaze slowly shifted many times from one to the other. He
felt sure that he was in the presence of one, at least, of the revered
family among whose fortunes his life had begun and was to end.
One had the pleasing but haughty Carteret air; the other had the
unmistakable straight, long family nose. Both had the keen black eyes,
horizontal brows, and thin, smiling lips that had distinguished both
the Carteret of the _Mayflower_ and him of the brigantine. Old Jake had
thought that he could have picked out his young master instantly from a
thousand Northerners; but he found himself in difficulties. The best he
could do was to use strategy.
"Howdy, Marse Blandford - howdy, suh?" he said, looking midway between
the two young men.
"Howdy, Uncle Jake?" they both answered pleasantly and in unison. "Sit
down. Have you brought the watch?"
Uncle Jake chose a hard-bottom chair at a respectful distance, sat on
the edge of it, and laid his hat carefully on the floor. The watch in
its buckskin case he gripped tightly. He had not risked his life on the
battle-field to rescue that watch from his "old marster's" foes to hand
it over again to the enemy without a struggle.
"Yes, suh; I got it in my hand, suh. I'm gwine give it to you right
away in jus' a minute. Old Missus told me to put it in young Marse
Blandford's hand and tell him to wear it for the family pride and
honor. It was a mighty longsome trip for an old nigger man to make - ten
thousand miles, it must be, back to old Vi'ginia, suh. You've growed
mightily, young marster. I wouldn't have reconnized you but for yo'
powerful resemblance to old marster."
With admirable diplomacy the old man kept his eyes roaming in the space
between the two men. His words might have been addressed to either.
Though neither wicked nor perverse, he was seeking for a sign.
Blandford and John exchanged winks.
"I reckon you done got you ma's letter," went on Uncle Jake. "She said
she was gwine to write to you 'bout my comin' along up this er-way.
"Yes, yes, Uncle Jake," said John briskly. "My cousin and I have just
been notified to expect you. We are both Carterets, you know."
"Although one of us," said Blandford, "was born and raised in the
North."
"So if you will hand over the watch - " said John.
"My cousin and I - " said Blandford.
"Will then see to it - " said John.
"That comfortable quarters are found for you," said Blandford.
With creditable ingenuity, old Jake set up a cackling, high-pitched,
protracted laugh. He beat his knee, picked up his hat and bent the brim
in an apparent paroxysm of humorous appreciation. The seizure afforded
him a mask behind which he could roll his eyes impartially between,
above, and beyond his two tormentors.
"I sees what!" he chuckled, after a while. "You gen'lemen is tryin' to
have fun with the po' old nigger. But you can't fool old Jake. I knowed
you, Marse Blandford, the minute I sot eyes on you. You was a po' skimpy
little boy no mo' than about fo'teen when you lef' home to come No'th;
but I knowed you the minute I sot eyes on you. You is the mawtal image
of old marster. The other gen'leman resembles you mightily, suh; but you
can't fool old Jake on a member of the old Vi'ginia family. No suh."
At exactly the same time both Carterets smiled and extended a hand for
the watch.
Uncle Jake's wrinkled, black face lost the expression of amusement to
which he had vainly twisted it. He knew that he was being teased, and
that it made little real difference, as far as its safety went, into
which of those outstretched hands he placed the family treasure. But it
seemed to him that not only his own pride and loyalty but much of the
Virginia Carterets' was at stake. He had heard down South during the war
about that other branch of the family that lived in the North and fought
on "the yuther side," and it had always grieved him. He had followed
his "old marster's" fortunes from stately luxury through war to almost
poverty. And now, with the last relic and reminder of him, blessed by
"old missus," and intrusted implicitly to his care, he had come ten
thousand miles (as it seemed) to deliver it into the hands of the one
who was to wear it and wind it and cherish it and listen to it tick off
the unsullied hours that marked the lives of the Carterets - of Virginia.
His experience and conception of the Yankees had been an impression of
tyrants - "low-down, common trash" - in blue, laying waste with fire and
sword. He had seen the smoke of many burning homesteads almost as grand
as Carteret Hall ascending to the drowsy Southern skies. And now he was
face to face with one of them - and he could not distinguish him from his
"young marster" whom he had come to find and bestow upon him the emblem
of his kingship - even as the arm "clothed in white samite, mystic,
wonderful" laid Excalibur in the right hand of Arthur. He saw before him
two young men, easy, kind, courteous, welcoming, either of whom might
have been the one he sought. Troubled, bewildered, sorely grieved at
his weakness of judgment, old Jake abandoned his loyal subterfuges.
His right hand sweated against the buckskin cover of the watch. He
was deeply humiliated and chastened. Seriously, now, his prominent,
yellow-white eyes closely scanned the two young men. At the end of his
scrutiny he was conscious of but one difference between them. One wore a
narrow black tie with a white pearl stickpin. The other's "four-in-hand"
was a narrow blue one pinned with a black pearl.
And then, to old Jake's relief, there came a sudden distraction. Drama
knocked at the door with imperious knuckles, and forced Comedy to the
wings, and Drama peeped with a smiling but set face over the footlights.
Percival, the hater of mill supplies, brought in a card, which he
handed, with the manner of one bearing a cartel, to Blue-Tie.
"Olivia De Ormond," read Blue-Tie from the card. He looked inquiringly
at his cousin.
"Why not have her in," said Black-Tie, "and bring matters to a
conclusion?"
"Uncle Jake," said one of the young men, "would you mind taking that
chair over there in the corner for a while? A lady is coming in - on some
business. We'll take up your case afterward."
The lady whom Percival ushered in was young and petulantly, decidedly,
freshly, consciously, and intentionally pretty. She was dressed with
such expensive plainness that she made you consider lace and ruffles as
mere tatters and rags. But one great ostrich plume that she wore would
have marked her anywhere in the army of beauty as the wearer of the
merry helmet of Navarre.
Miss De Ormond accepted the swivel chair at Blue-Tie's desk. Then the
gentlemen drew leather-upholstered seats conveniently near, and spoke
of the weather.
"Yes," said she, "I noticed it was warmer. But I mustn't take up too
much of your time during business hours. That is," she continued,
"unless we talk business."
She addressed her words to Blue-Tie, with a charming smile.
"Very well," said he. "You don't mind my cousin being present, do you?
We are generally rather confidential with each other - especially in
business matters."
"Oh no," caroled Miss De Ormond. "I'd rather he did hear. He knows all
about it, anyhow. In fact, he's quite a material witness because he was
present when you - when it happened. I thought you might want to talk
things over before - well, before any action is taken, as I believe the
lawyers say."
"Have you anything in the way of a proposition to make?" asked
Black-Tie.
Miss De Ormond looked reflectively at the neat toe of one of her dull
kid-pumps.
"I had a proposal made to me," she said. "If the proposal sticks it cuts
out the proposition. Let's have that settled first."
"Well, as far as - " began Blue-Tie.
"Excuse me, cousin," interrupted Black-Tie, "if you don't mind my
cutting in." And then he turned, with a good-natured air, toward the
lady.
"Now, let's recapitulate a bit," he said cheerfully. "All three of us,
besides other mutual acquaintances, have been out on a good many larks
together."
"I'm afraid I'll have to call the birds by another name," said Miss De
Ormond.
"All right," responded Black-Tie, with unimpaired cheerfulness; "suppose
we say 'squabs' when we talk about the 'proposal' and 'larks' when we
discuss the 'proposition.' You have a quick mind, Miss De Ormond. Two
months ago some half-dozen of us went in a motor-car for a day's run
into the country. We stopped at a road-house for dinner. My cousin
proposed marriage to you then and there. He was influenced to do so, of
course, by the beauty and charm which no one can deny that you possess."
"I wish I had you for a press agent, Mr. Carteret," said the beauty,
with a dazzling smile.
"You are on the stage, Miss De Ormond," went on Black-Tie. "You have
had, doubtless, many admirers, and perhaps other proposals. You must
remember, too, that we were a party of merrymakers on that occasion.
There were a good many corks pulled. That the proposal of marriage
was made to you by my cousin we cannot deny. But hasn't it been your
experience that, by common consent, such things lose their seriousness
when viewed in the next day's sunlight? Isn't there something of a
'code' among good 'sports' - I use the word in its best sense - that
wipes out each day the follies of the evening previous?"
"Oh yes," said Miss De Ormond. "I know that very well. And I've always
played up to it. But as you seem to be conducting the case - with the
silent consent of the defendant - I'll tell you something more. I've got
letters from him repeating the proposal. And they're signed, too."
"I understand," said Black-Tie gravely. "What's your price for the
letters?"
"I'm not a cheap one," said Miss De Ormond. "But I had decided to make
you a rate. You both belong to a swell family. Well, if I _am_ on the
stage nobody can say a word against me truthfully. And the money is only
a secondary consideration. It isn't the money I was after. I - I believed
him - and - and I liked him."
She cast a soft, entrancing glance at Blue-Tie from under her long
eyelashes.
"And the price?" went on Black-Tie, inexorably.
"Ten thousand dollars," said the lady, sweetly.
"Or - "
"Or the fulfillment of the engagement to marry."
"I think it is time," interrupted Blue-Tie, "for me to be allowed to say
a word or two. You and I, cousin, belong to a family that has held its
head pretty high. You have been brought up in a section of the country
very different from the one where our branch of the family lived. Yet
both of us are Carterets, even if some of our ways and theories differ.
You remember, it is a tradition of the family, that no Carteret ever
failed in chivalry to a lady or failed to keep his word when it was
given."
Then Blue-Tie, with frank decision showing on his countenance, turned
to Miss De Ormond.
"Olivia," said he, "on what date will you marry me?"
Before she could answer, Black-Tie again interposed.
"It is a long journey," said he, "from Plymouth rock to Norfolk Bay.
Between the two points we find the changes that nearly three centuries
have brought. In that time the old order has changed. We no longer burn
witches or torture slaves. And to-day we neither spread our cloaks on
the mud for ladies to walk over nor treat them to the ducking-stool.
It is the age of common sense, adjustment, and proportion. All of
us - ladies, gentlemen, women, men, Northerners, Southerners, lords,
caitiffs, actors, hardware-drummers, senators, hod-carriers, and
politicians - are coming to a better understanding. Chivalry is one of
our words that changes its meaning every day. Family pride is a thing