PURSUING THE POSSUM
And as if in sympathy with the heart of the pursued possum, the
thermometer began to fall in the afternoon and by night had established a
clear, cold, windless condition of weather. The start for the Cliffs was
to be made from the fork of the River Road, where cars, horses, traps and
hampers were to be left with the servants, who by half past nine were
already in an excited group around a blazing, dry oak fire, over which
two score plump birds were ready to be roasted, attended by the
autocratic Tempie. Jeff piled high with brush a huge log whose
heart was being burned out for the baking of sundry potatoes, while the
aroma from the barbecue pit was maddening to even a ten o'clock appetite,
and no estimate could be made of what damage would be done after the
midnight return from the trail of the wily tree fruit.
David Kildare as usual was M.F.H. and his voice rang out as clearly
against the tall pines, while he welcomed the cars and traps full of
excited hunters, as if he had not been speaking in a crowded hall for an
hour or two.
Mrs. Cherry Lawrence arrived early, accompanied by the distinguished
suffragist, who was as alert for sensations new as if she had been one of
an exploration party into the heart of darkest Africa. They were attended
by Tom and also the suave Hobson, who was all attentions but whose
maneuvers in the direction of Caroline Darrah were pitiably fruitless.
He was seconded in his attentions to the stranger by David with his most
fascinating manner, and Mrs. Cherry sparkled and glowed at him with
subdued witchery, while Tom sulked close at her side.
Polly and young Boston had trailed Mrs. Buchanan's car on horses and
Phoebe was intent on pinning up the débutante's habit skirt to a
comfortable scramble length. Billy Bob fairly bubbled over with glee and
Milly, who had come to assist Mrs. Matilda in overlooking the
preparations for the feast for the returned hunters, was already busy
assembling hampers and cases on a flat rock over behind the largest fire.
Her anxious heart was at rest about her nestlings, for Caroline's maid,
Annette, had gone French mad over the babies and had begged the privilege
of keeping Mammy Betty company in her watch beside the cots.
"Come here, Caroline, child," called David from behind the farthest fire,
"let me look at you! Seems to me you are in for a good freezing." And he
drew her into the light of the blaze.
She was kilted and booted and coated and belted in the most beautiful and
wholly correct attire for the hunt that could possibly have been
contrived; that is, for a sedate cross-country bird stalk or a decorous
trap shooting, but for a long night scramble over the frozen ground she
was insufficiently clad. The other girls all wore heavy golf skirts and
coats and were muffled to their eyes; even the big-bug lady wore a
knitted comforter high round her throat. Without doubt Caroline would
have been in for a cold deal, if David had not been more than equal to
any occasion.
"Here, Andy, skin out of that sweater and get into that extra buckskin in
my electric," he said, and forthwith began without ceremony to assist
Andrew Sevier in peeling off a soft, white, high-collared sweater he
wore, and in less time than it took to think it he had slipped it over
Caroline's protesting head, pulled it down around her slim hips almost to
where her kilts met her boots and rolled the collar up under her eyes.
Then he immediately turned his attention to the arrival of the mongrel
sleuths, each accompanied by a white-toothed negro of renowned
coon-fighting, possum-catching proclivities, whom he had assembled from
the Old Harpeth to lead the hunt, thus leaving Caroline and Andrew alone
for the moment on the far side of the fire.
"Indeed, I'm not going to have your sweater!" she protested, beginning to
divest herself of the borrowed garment, but not knowing exactly how to
crawl out of its soft embrace.
"Please, oh, please do!" he exclaimed quickly, and as he spoke he caught
her hand away, that had begun to tug at the collar.
"I wouldn't keep it for the world--and have you cold, but--I can't get
out," she answered with a laugh. "Please show me or call for help."
And as she pleaded Andrew Sevier towered beside her, tall and slender,
while the cold breeze with its pine-laden breath ruffled his white
shirt-sleeves across his arms. Caroline Darrah in the embrace of his
clinging apparel was a sight that sent the blood through his veins at a
rate that warred with the winds, and his eyes drank deeply. The color
mounted under her eyes and with the unconsciousness of a child she
nestled her chin in the woolly folds about the neck as she turned her
face from the firelight.
"Well, then, get David's coat from the car," she pleaded.
"Will you stand back in the shadow of that tree until I do?" he asked.
He had caught across the fire a glimpse of the restive Hobson and a
sudden mad desire prompted him to snatch this one joy from Fate, come
what would--just a few hours with her under the winter stars, when life
seemed to offer so little in the count of the years.
"Why, yes, of course! Did you think I'd dare go out in the dark alone,
without you?" and her joyous ingenuous casting of herself upon his
protection was positively poignant. "Hurry, please, because I--don't want
anybody to find me before you come!" After which request it took him very
little time to run across the lot and vault the fence into the road where
the electric stood.
"It's so uncertain how things arrange themselves sometimes, some places,"
she remarked to herself as she caught sight of the movements of the
foiled Hobson, whose search had now become an open maneuver.
Suddenly she laid her cheek against the arm of the sweater and sniffed it
with her delicate nose--yes, there was the undeniable fragrance of the
major's Seven Oaks heart-leaf. "He steals the tobacco, too," she again
remarked to herself as she caught sight of him skirting the fires as
he returned.
Just at this moment a pandemonium of yelps, barks, bays and yells broke
forth up the ravine and declared the hunt on.
"Everybody follow the dogs and keep within hearing distance! We'll wait
for the trailers to come up when we tree before we shake down!" shouted
David as with one accord the whole company plunged into the woods.
Away from the fire, the starlight, which was beginning to be reinforced
by the glow from a late old moon, was bright enough to keep the rush up
the ravine, over log and boulder, through tangle and across open, a not
too dangerous foray.
The first hurdle was a six-rail fence that snaked its way between a
frozen meadow and a woods lot. David stationed himself on the far side of
the lowest and strongest panel and proceeded to swing down the girls whom
Hob and Tom persuaded to the top rail.
The champion for the rights of women took long and much assistance for
the mount and entrusted her somewhat bulky self to the strong arms of
David Kildare with a feminine dependence that almost succeeded in
cracking those stalwart supports.
Polly climbed two rails, put her hand on the top and vaulted like a boy
almost into the embrace of young Massachusetts and together they raced
after the dogs, who were adding tumult to the hitherto pandemonium of the
hot trail.
Tom Cantrell managed Mrs. Cherry most deftly and seemed anxious to direct
David in the landing though she was most willing to trust it entirely to
him. After hurrying Phoebe to the top rail he vaulted lightly to the side
of David and departed in haste, taking the reluctant widow with him by
main force.
Phoebe perched herself on the top of the fence, which brought her head
somewhat above the level of David's, and seemed in no hurry to descend in
order to be at the shake-down, which from the shouts and yelps seemed
imminent.
"Ready, or want to rest a minute?" asked David gently; but his eyes
looked past hers and there was the shadow of reserve in his voice.
"No," answered Phoebe, "but you must be tired so I'll just slip down,"
and she essayed to cheat him with the utmost treachery. David neither
spoke nor looked at her directly but took her quietly in his arms and
swung her to the ground beside him.
Now this was not the first pursuit of the possum that had been attended
by Phoebe in the company of David Kildare, and she was prepared for the
audacious hint of a squeeze, with which he usually took his toll and
which she always ignored utterly with reproving intent; the more
reproving on the one or two occasions when she had been tempted into
yielding to the caress for the remotest fraction of a second. But for
every snub in the fence events that had been pulled off between them in
the past years, David was fully revenged by the impassive landing of
Phoebe on the dry and frozen grass at his side. Revenged--and there was
something over that was cutting into her adamant heart like a two-edge
marble saw.
But Phoebe had been born a thoroughbred and it was head up and run as she
saw in a second, so she smiled up at him and said in a perfectly friendly
tone:
"I really don't think we'd better wait for Caroline and Andrew. Do let's
hurry, for they've treed, and I think those dogs will go mad in a
moment!" And together they disappeared in the woodland.
Around a tall tree that stood on the slope of the hill they found a scene
that was uproar rampant. Five maddened dogs gazed aloft into the gnarled
branches of the persimmon king and danced and jumped to the accompaniment
of one another's insane yelps. A half-dozen negro boys were in the same
attitude and state of mind, and the tension was immense.
Polly gasped and giggled and the suffrage lady almost became entangled
with the waltzing dogs in her endeavor to sight the quarry.
"Dar he am!" exclaimed the blackest satyr, and he pointed to one of the
lower limbs from which there hung by the tail the most pathetic little
bunch of bristles imaginable. "Le'me shake him down, Mister David, I
foun' him!"
"All right, shin up, but mind the limbs," answered David. "And you, Jake,
get the dogs in hand! We want to take home possums, not full dogs!"
And like an agile ape the darky swung himself up and out on the low limb.
"Here he come!" he shouted, and ducked to give a jerk that shook the
whole limb.
The dogs danced and Polly squealed, while the rotund lady managed to step
on young Back Bay's toes and almost forgot to "beg pardon," but Mr.
Possum hung on by his long rat-tail with the greatest serenity.
"Buck up thar, nigger, shake dat whole tree; dis here ain't no
cake-walk," one of his confrères yelled, and the sally was caught with a
loud guffaw.
Thus urged the darky braced himself and succeeded in putting the whole
tree into a commotion, at the height of which there was a crash and a
scramble from the top limb and in a second a ball of gray fur descended
on his woolly head, knocked him off his perch and crashed with him to
the ground. Then there ensued a raging battle in which were involved five
dogs, a long darky and a ring-tailed streak of coon lightning, which
whirled and bit and scratched itself free and plunged into the darkness
before the astonished hunters could get more than a glimpse of the mêlée.
"Coon, coon!" yelled the negroes, and scattered into the woods at the
heels of the discountenanced dogs. Mr. Possum, saved by the stiff fight
put up by his ring-tailed woods-brother, had taken this opportunity of
unhanging himself and departing into parts unknown, perhaps a still more
wily citizen after his threatened extinction.
In a few minutes from up the hill came another tumult, and Jake raised a
long shout of "two possums," which served to hasten the scramble of the
rest of the party through the underbrush to a breathless pace.
Another gray ball hung to another limb and this time the derisive Jake
succeeded in the shake-down and the bagging amid the most breathless
excitement. It was a sight to see the sophisticated little animal lie
like dead and be picked up and handled in a state of seeming lifeless
rigidity--a display of self-control that seemed to argue a superiority of
instinct over reason.
After this opening event the hunt swept on with a rapidly mounting count
and a heavier and heavier bag.
And, too, it was just as well that no one in particular, save the
defrauded Hobson, who was obliged to conceal his chagrin, was especially
mindful of the whereabouts of Caroline and the poet. In fact, it would
have been difficult for them to have located themselves in answer to a
wireless inquiry.
Andrew had started out from the hiding tree with the intention of cutting
across the trail of the hunters at right angles a little up the ravine,
and he had trusted to a six-year-old remembrance of the lay of the land
as he led the way across the frosty meadow and up the ridge at a brisk
pace. Caroline swung lithely along beside him and in the matter of fences
took Polly's policy of a hand up and then a high vault, which made for
practically no delay. They skirted the tangle of buck bushes and came out
on the edge of the cliff just as the hunt swept by at their feet and on
up the creek bed. They were both breathless and tingling with the
exertion of their climb.
"There they go--left behind--no catching them!" exclaimed Andrew. "No
possum for you, and this is your hunt! I'm most awfully sorry!"
"Don't you suppose they will save me one?" asked Caroline composedly, and
as she spoke she walked to the edge of the bluff and looked down into the
dark ravine interestedly.
"You don't want the possum, child, you want to see it caught. The negroes
get the little beasts; it's the bagging that's the excitement!" Andrew
regarded her with amused interest.
"I don't seem to care to see things caught," she answered. "I'm always
sorry for them. I would let them all go if I got the chance--all caught
things." A little crackle in the bushes at her side made her move nearer
to him.
"I believe you would--release any 'caught thing'--if you could," he said
with a note of bitterness in his voice that she failed to detect. A cold
wind swept across the meadow and he swung around so his broad shoulders
screened her from its tingle. Her eyes gazed out over the valley at their
feet.
"This is the edge of the world," she said softly. "Do you remember your
little verses about the death of the stars?" She turned and raised her
eyes to his. "We are holding a death-watch beside them now as the moon
comes up over the ridge there. When I read the poem I felt breathless to
get out somewhere high up and away from things--and watch."
"I was 'high up' when I wrote them," answered Andrew with a laugh. "Look
over there on the hill--see those two old locusts? They are fern palms
and those scrub oaks are palmettos. The white frost makes the meadow a
lagoon and this rock is the pier of my bridge where I came out to watch
one night to test the force of a freshet. Over there the light from Mrs.
Matilda's fires is the construction camp and beyond that hill is my
bungalow. That's the same old moon that's rising relentlessly to murder
the stars again. Do you want to stay and watch the tragedy--or hunt?"
Without a word Caroline sank down on the dried leaves that lay in a drift
on the edge of the bluff. Andrew crouched close beside her to the
windward. And the ruthless old moon that was putting the stars out of
business by the second was not in the least abashed to find them gazing
at her as she blustered up over the ridge, round and red with exertion.
"Were you alone on that pier?" asked Caroline with the utmost naïveté, as
she snuggled down deeper into the collar of the sweater.
"I'm generally alone--in most ways," answered Andrew, the suspicion of a
laugh covering the sadness in his tone. "I seem to see myself going
through life alone unless something happens--quick!" The bitter note
sounded plainly this time and cut with an ache into her consciousness.
"I've been a little lonely, too--always, until just lately and now I
don't feel that way at all;" she looked at him thoughtfully with moonlit
eyes that were deep like sapphires. "I wonder why?"
Andrew Sevier's heart stopped dead still for a second and then began to
pound in his breast as if entrapped. For the moment his voice was utterly
useless and he prayed helplessly for a meed of self-control that might
aid him to gain a sane footing.
Then just at that moment the old genie of the forests, who gloats through
the seasons over myriads of wooings that are carried on in the fastnesses
of his green woods, sounded a long, low, guttural groan that rose to a
blood-curdling shriek, from the branches just above the head of the
moon-mad man and girl. For an instrument he used the throat of an enraged
old hoot-owl, perturbed by the intrusion of the noise of the distant hunt
and the low-voiced conversation on his wonted privacy.
And the experienced ancient succeeded in precipitating the crisis of the
situation with magical promptness, for Caroline sprang to her feet,
turned with a shudder and buried her head in Andrew's hunting coat
somewhere near the left string for cartridge loops. She clung to him in
abject terror.
"Sweetheart!" he exclaimed, giving her a little shake, "it's only a cross
old owl--don't be frightened," and he raised her cheek against his own
and drew her nearer. But Caroline trembled and clung and seemed unable to
face the situation. Andrew essayed further reassurance by turning his
head until his lips pressed a tentative kiss against the curve of her
chin.
"He can't get you," he entreated and managed a still closer embrace.
"Is he still there?" came in a muffled voice from against his neck where
Caroline had again buried her head at a slight crackling from the dark
branches overhead.
"I think he is, bless him!" answered Andrew, and this time the kiss
managed a landing on the warm lips under the eyes raised to his.
And then ensued several breathless moments while the world reeled around
and the vital elemental force that is sometimes cruel, sometimes kind,
turned the wheel of their universe.
"I'm not frightened any more," Caroline at last managed to say as she
prepared to withdraw, not too decisively, from her strong-armed refuge.
"He's still there," warned Andrew Sevier with a happy laugh, and Caroline
yielded again for a second, then drew his arms aside.
"Thank you--I'm not afraid any more--of anything," she said, laughing
into his eyes, "and I really think we had better try to get back to camp
and supper, for I don't hear the dogs any longer. We don't want to be
lost like the 'babes in the woods' and left to die out here, do we?"
"Are you sure we haven't gone and stumbled into heaven, anyway?" demanded
Andrew.
He then proceeded to roll the collar of her sweater higher about her ears
and to pull the long sleeves down over her hands. He even bent to stretch
the garment an inch or two nearer the tops of her boots.
"Are you cold?" he demanded anxiously, for a stiff wind had risen and
blew upon them with icy breath.
"Not a single bit," she answered, submitting herself to his anxious
ministrations with her most engaging six-going-on-seven manner. Then she
caught one of his fumbling hands in hers and pressed it to her cheek for
a moment.
"Now," she said, "we can never be lonely any more, can we? I'm going to
race you down the hill, across the meadow and over three fences to
supper!" And before he could stay her she had flitted through the bushes
and was running on before him, slim and fleet.
He caught her in time to swing her over the first fence and capture an
elusive caress. The second barrier she vaulted and eluded him entirely,
but from the top of the last she bent and gave him his kiss as he lifted
her down. In another moment they had joined the circle around the
crackling fire, where they were greeted with the wildest hilarity and
overwhelmed with food and banter.
"Did you people ever hear of the man who bought a fifty-dollar coon dog,
took him out to hunt the first night, almost cried because he thought he
had lost him down a sink hole, hunted all night for him, came home in the
daylight and found pup asleep under the kitchen stove?" demanded David as
he filled two long glasses with a simmering decoction, from which arose
the aroma of baked apples, spices, and some of the major's eighty-six
corn heart. "Caroline is my point to my little story. Have you two been
sitting in Mrs. Matilda's car or mine, or did you roost for a time on the
fence over there in the dark?"
"Please, David, please hush and give me a bird and a biscuit--I'm
hungry," answered Caroline as she sank on a cushion beside Mrs. Buchanan.
"According to the ink slingers of all times you ought not to be; but Andy
has already got outside of two sandwiches, so I suppose you are due one
small bird. That cake is grand, beautiful. I've put it away to eat all by
myself to-morrow. Andrew Sevier doesn't need any. He wouldn't know cake
from corn-pone--he's moonstruck."
Just at this point a well-aimed pine-cone glanced off David's collar and
he settled down to the business in hand, which was the disposal of a
bursting and perfectly hot potato, handed fresh from the coals by the
attentive Jeff.
And it was more than an hour later that the tired hunters wended their
way back to the city. Polly was so sleepy that she could hardly sit her
horse and was in a subdued and utterly fascinating mood, with which she
did an irreparable amount of damage to the stranger within her gates
as she rode along the moonlit pike, and for which she had later to make
answer. The woman's champion dozed in the tonneau and only David had the
spirit to sing as they whirled along.
Hadn't Phoebe stirred the sugar into his cup of coffee and then in an
absolutely absent-minded manner tasted it before she had come around the
fire to hand it to him? It had been a standing argument between them for
years as to a man's right to this small attention, which they both teased
Mrs. Matilda for bestowing upon the major. It was an insignificant,
inconsequent little ceremony in itself but it fired a train in David's
mind, made for healing the wound in his heart and brought its
consequences. Another reconstruction campaign began to shape its policy
in the mind of David Kildare which had to do with the molding of the
destiny of the high-headed young woman of his affections, rather than
with the amelioration of conditions in his native city. So, high and
clear he sang the call of the mocking-bird with its ecstasies and its
minors.
But late as it was, after he had landed his guests at their doors, he had
a long talk over the phone with the clerk of his headquarters and sent a
half-dozen telegrams before he turned into his room. When he switched on
his lights he saw that Andrew stood by the window looking out into the
night. His face was so drawn and white as he turned that David started
and reached out to lay a hand on his shoulder.
"Dave," he said, "I'm a blackguard and a coward--don't touch me!"
"What is it, Andrew?" asked David as he laid his arm across the tense
shoulders.
"I thought I was strong and dared to stay--now I know I'm a coward and
couldn't go. I'll have to sneak away and leave her--hurt!" His voice was
low and toned with an unspeakable scorn of himself.
"Andy," asked David, as he swung him around to face him, "was Caroline
Darrah too much for you--and the moon?"
"There's nothing to say about it, David, nothing! I have only made it
hard for her: and killed myself for myself forever. She's a child and
she'll forget. You'll see to her, won't you?"
"What are you going to do now?" asked David sternly.
"Cut and run--cowards always do," answered Andrew bitterly. "I am going
to stay and see you through this election, for it's too late to turn the
press matters over to any one else--and I'm going to pray to find some
way to make it easier for her before I leave her. I'm afraid some day
she'll find out--and not understand why I went."
"Why do you go, Andrew?" asked David as he faced this friend with
compelling eyes. "If it's pride that takes you, better give it up! It's
deadly for you both, for she's more of a woman than you think--she'll
suffer."
"David, do you think she would have me if she knew what I put aside
to take her--_and his millions_? Could Peters Brown's heiress ever
have anything but contempt for me? When it comes to her she must
understand--and not think I held it against her!"
"Tell her, Andrew; let her decide! It's her right now!"
"Never," answered Andrew passionately. "She is just beginning to lose
some of her sensitiveness among us and this is the worst of all the
things she has felt were between her and her people. It is the only thing
he covered and hid from her. I'll _never_ tell her--I'll go--and she
will forget!" In his voice there was the note of finality that is
unmistakable from man to man. He turned toward his room as he finished
speaking.
"Then, boy," said David as he held him back for a second in the bend of
his arm, a tenderness in voice and clasp, "go if you must; but we've
three days yet. The gods can get mighty busy in that many hours if they
pull on a woman's side--which they always do. Good night!"