THE HUNT
He awoke to a musical twittering and chirping, to find the sun
pouring into the dusty room in a very glory. He rolled from the
blanket and stood upright, filling his lungs with a long deep breath
of satisfaction. He felt singularly light-hearted and alive. The
bulldog came bounding through the window, dirty from the weeds, and
flung himself upon his master in a canine rapture.
"Get out!" quoth the latter, laughing. "Stop licking my feet! How the
dickens do you suppose I'm to get into my clothes with your ridiculous
antics going on? Down, I say!"
He began to dress rapidly. "Listen to those birds, Chum!" he said.
"There's an ornithological political convention going on out there. Wish
I knew what they were chinning about--they're so mightily in earnest.
See them splashing in that fountain? If you had any self-respect you'd
be taking a bath yourself. You need it! Hark!" He broke off and
listened. "Who's that singing?"
The sound drew nearer--a lugubrious chant, with the weirdest minor
reflections, faintly suggestive of the rag-time ditties of the
music-halls, yet with a plaintive cadence:
"As he went mowin' roun' de fiel'
Er moc'sin bit him on de heel.
Right toodle-link-uh-day,
Right toodle-link-uh-day,
Right toodle-link-uh, toodle-link-uh,
Da-a-dee-e-eaye!
"Dey kyah'd him in ter his Sally deah.
She say, 'Mah Lawd, yo' looks so queah!'
Right toodle-link-uh-day,
Right toodle-link-uh-day,
Right toodle-link-uh, toodle-link-uh,
Da-a-dee-e-e-aye!"
A smile of genuine delight crossed the listener's face. "That would make
the everlasting fortune of a music-hall artist," Valiant muttered, as,
coatless, and with a towel over his arm, he stepped to the piazza.
"Dey laid him down--spang on de groun'.
He-e-e shet-up-his-eyes en looked all aroun'.
Right toodle-link-uh-day,
Right toodle-link-uh-day,
Right toodle-link-uh, toodle-link-uh,
Da-a-dee e-e-aye!
"So den he died, giv' up de Ghos'.
To Abrum's buzzum he did pos'--
Right toodle-link-uh-day,
Right toodle-link-uh-day--"
"Good morning, Uncle Jefferson."
The singer broke off his refrain, set down the twig-broom that he had
been wielding and came toward him. "Mawnin', suh. Mawnin'," he said.
"Hopes yo'-all slep' good. Ah reck'n dem ar birds woke yo' up; dey's
makin' seh er 'miration."
"Thank you. Never slept better in my life. Am I laboring under a
delusion when I imagine I smell coffee?"
Just then there came a voice from the open door of the kitchen: "Calls
yo'se'f er _man_, yo' triflin' reconstructed niggah! W'en marstah
gwineter git he brekfus' wid' yo' ramshacklin' eroun' wid dat dawg all
dis Gawd's-blessid mawnin'? Go fotch some mo' fiah-wood dis minute. Yo'
heah?"
A turbaned head poked itself through the door, with a good-natured
leaf-brown face beneath it, which broadened into a wide smile as its
owner bobbed energetically at Valiant's greeting. "Fo' de _Lawd_!" she
exclaimed, wiping floury hands on a gingham apron. "Yo' sho' is up
early, but Ah got yo' brekfus' mos' ready, suh."
"All right, Aunt Daphne. I'll be back directly."
He sped down to the lake to plunge his head into the cool water and
thereby sharpen the edge of an appetite that needed no honing. From the
little valley through which the stream meandered, rose a curdled mist,
fraying now beneath the warming sun. The tall tangled grass through
which he passed was beaded with dew like diamonds and hung with a
thousand fairy jeweled webs. The wild honeysuckle was alive with quick
whirrings of hummingbirds, and he hung his pocket-mirror from a twig and
shaved with a woodsy chorus in his ears.
He came up the trail again to find the reading-stand transferred to the
porch and laid with a white cloth on which was set a steaming
coffee-pot, with fresh cream, saltless butter and crisp hot biscuit; and
as he sat down, with a sigh of pure delight, in his dressing-gown--a
crepy Japanese thing redeemed from womanishness by the bold green bamboo
of its design--Uncle Jefferson planted before him a generous platter of
bacon, eggs and potatoes. These he attacked with a surprising keenness.
As he buttered his fifth biscuit he looked at the dog, rolling on his
back in morning ecstasy, with a look of humorous surprise.
"Chum," he said, "what do you think of that? All my life a single roll
and a cup of coffee have been the most I could ever negotiate for
breakfast, and then it was apt to taste like chips and whetstones. And
now look at this plate!" The dog ceased winnowing his ear with a hind
foot and looked back at his master with much the same expression.
Clearly his own needs had not been forgotten.
"Reck'n Ah bettah go ter git dat ar machine thing," said Uncle
Jefferson behind him. "Ol' 'ooman, heah, she 'low ter fix up de kitchen
dis mawnin' en we begin on de house dis evenin'."
"Right-o," said Valiant. "It's all up-hill, so the motor won't run away
with you. Aunt Daphne, can you get some help with the cleaning?"
"He'p?" that worthy responded with fine scorn. "_No_, suh. Moughty few,
in de town 'cep'n low-down yaller new-issue trash det ain' wu'f killin'!
Ah gwineter go fo' dat house mahse'f 'fo' long, hammah en tongs, en git
it fix' up!"
"Splendid! My destiny is in your hands. You might take the dog with you,
Uncle Jefferson; the run will do him good."
When the latter had disappeared and truculent sounds from the kitchen
indicated that the era of strenuous cleaning had begun, he reentered the
library, changed the water in the rose-glass and set it on the edge of
the shady front porch, where its flaunting blossom made a dash of bright
crimson against the grayed weather-beaten brick. This done, he opened
the one large room on the ground-floor that he had not visited.
It was double the size of the library, a parlor hung in striped yellow
silk vaguely and tenderly faded, with a tall plate mirror set over a
marble-topped console at either side. In one corner stood a grand piano
of Circassian walnut with keys of tinted mother-of-pearl and a slender
music-rack inlaid with morning-glories in the same material. From the
center of the ceiling, above an oval table, depended a great chandelier
hung with glass prisms. He drew his handkerchief across the table;
beneath the disfiguring dust it showed a highly polished surface inlaid
with different colored woods, in an intricate Italian-like landscape.
The legs of the consoles were bowed, delicately carved, and of
gold-leaf. The chairs and sofas were covered with dusty slip-covers of
muslin. He lifted one of these. The tarnished gold furniture was Louis
XV, the upholstery of yellow brocade with a pattern of pink roses. Two
Japanese hawthorn vases sat on teak-wood stands and a corner held a
glass cabinet containing a collection of small ivories and faience.
His appreciative eye kindled. "What a room!" he muttered. "Not a jarring
note anywhere! That's an old Crowe and Christopher piano. I'll get
plenty of music out of that! You don't see such chandeliers outside of
palaces any more except in the old French chateaus. It holds a hundred
candles if it holds one! I never knew before all there was in that
phrase 'the candle-lighted fifties.' I can imagine what it looked like,
with the men in white stocks and flowered waistcoats and the women in
their crinolines and red-heeled slippers, bowing to the minuet under
that candle-light! I'll bet the girls bred in this neighborhood won't
take much to the turkey-trot and the bunny-hug!"
He went thoughtfully back to the great hall, where sat the big chest
on which lay the volume of _Lucile_. He pushed down the antique
wrought-iron hasp and threw up the lid. It was filled to the brim
with textures: heavy portieres of rose-damask, table-covers of
faded soft-toned tapestry, window-hangings of dull green--all with
tobacco-leaves laid between the folds and sifted thickly over with the
sparkling white powder. At the bottom, rolled in tarry-smelling paper,
he found a half-dozen thin, Persian prayer-rugs.
"Phew!" he whistled. "I certainly ought to be grateful to that law firm
that 'inspected' the place. Think of the things lying here all these
years! And that powder everywhere! It's done the work, too, for there's
not a sign of moth. If I'm not careful, I'll stumble over the family
plate--it seems to be about the only thing wanting."
The mantelpiece, beneath the shrouded elk's head, was of gray marble
in which a crest was deeply carved. He went close and examined it. "A
sable greyhound, rampant, on a field argent," he said. "That's my own
crest, I suppose." There touched him again the same eery sensation
of acquaintance that had possessed him with his first sight of the
house-front. "Somehow it's familiar," he muttered; "where have I seen
it before?"
He thought a moment, then went quickly into the library and began to
ransack the trunk. At length he found a small box containing keepsakes
of various kinds. He poured the medley on to the table--an uncut
moonstone, an amethyst-topped pencil that one of his tutors had given
him as a boy, a tiger's claw, a compass and what-not. Among them was a
man's seal-ring with a crest cut in a cornelian. He looked at it
closely. It was the same device.
The ring had been his father's. Just when or how it had come into his
possession he could never remember. It had lain among these keepsakes so
many years that he had almost forgotten its existence. He had never worn
a ring, but now, as he went back to the hall, he slipped it on his
finger. The motto below the crest was worn away, but it showed clear in
the marble of the hall-mantel: _I clinge_.
His eyes turned from the carven words and strayed to the pleasant sunny
foliage outside. An arrogant boast, perhaps, yet in the event well
justified. Valiants had held that selfsame slope when the encircling
forests had rung with war-whoop and blazed with torture-fire. They had
held on through Revolution and Civil War. Good and bad, abiding and
lawless, every generation had cleaved stubbornly to its acres. _I
clinge._ His father had clung through absence that seemed to have been
almost exile, and now he, the last Valiant, was come to make good the
boast.
His gaze wavered. The tail of his eye had caught through the window a
spurt of something dashing and vivid, that grazed the corner of a
far-off field. He craned his neck, but it had passed the line of his
vision. The next moment, however, there came trailing on the satiny
stillness the high-keyed ululation of a horn, and an instant later a
long-drawn _hallo-o-o_! mixed with a pattering chorus of yelps.
He went close, and leaning from the sill, shaded his eyes with his hand.
The noise swelled and rounded in volume; it was nearing rapidly. As
he looked, the hunt dashed into full view between the tree-boles--a
galloping melee of khaki and scarlet, swarming across the fresh green of
a wheat field, behind a spotted swirl of hounds. It mounted a rise,
dipped momentarily into a gully and then, in a narrow sweeping curve,
came pounding on up the long slope, directly toward the house.
"Confound it!" said John Valiant belligerently; "they're on my land!"
They were near enough now for him to hear the voices of the men, calling
encouragement to the dogs, and to see the white ribbons of foam across
the flanks of the laboring horses. One scarlet-coated feminine rider,
detached from the bunch, had spurred in advance and was leading by a
clean hundred yards, bareheaded, her hat fallen back to the limit of
its ribbon knotted under her chin, and her waving hair gleaming like
tarnished gold.
"How she rides!" muttered the solitary watcher. "Cross-saddle, of
course,--the sensible little sport! She'll never in the world do that
wall!--Yes, by George!" For, with a beseeching cry and a straining tug,
she had fairly lifted her big golden-chestnut hunter over the high
barrier in a leap as clean as the flight of a flying squirrel. He saw
her lean forward to pat the wet arching neck as the horse settled again
into its pace.
John Valiant's admiration turned to delight. "Why," he said, "it's the
Lady-of-the-Roses!"
He put his hands on the sill and vaulted to the porch.