THE TRESPASSER
Till the sun was high John Valiant lay on his back in the fragrant
grass, meditatively watching a bucaneering chicken-hawk draw widening
circles against the blue and listening to the vibrant tattoo of a
"pecker-wood" on a far-away tree, and the timorous wet whistle of a
bob-white. The sun shone through the tracery of the foliage, making a
quivering mosaic of light and shadow all about him. A robin ran across
the grass with his breast puffed out as if he had been stealing apples;
now and then an inquisitive yellow-hammer darted above and in the bushes
cardinals wove slender sharp flashes of living crimson. The whole place
was very quiet now. For just one thrilling moment it had burgeoned into
sound and movement: when the sweaty horses had stood snorting and
stamping in the yard with the hounds scampering between their legs and
the riding-coats winking like rubies in the early sunshine!
Had she recognized him as the smudged tinkerer of the stalled car? "She
saw me drop that wretched brute through the window," he chuckled. "I
could take oath to that. But she didn't give me away, true little sport
that she was. And she won't. I can't think of any reason, but I know."
The chuckle broadened to an appreciative grin. "What an ass she must
have thought me! To risk a nasty bite and rob her of her brush into the
bargain! How she looked at me, just for a minute, with that thoroughbred
face, out of those sea-deep eyes, under that whorling, marvelous
heaped-up hair of hers! Was she angry? I wonder!"
At length he rose and went back to the house. With a bunch of keys he
had found he went to the stables, after some difficulty gained access,
and propped the crazy doors and windows open to the sun. The building
was airy and well-lighted and contained a dozen roomy box-stalls, a
spacious loft and a carriage-house. The straw bedding had been
unremoved, mice-gnawed sacking and rotted hay lay in the mangers, and
the warped harness, hanging on its pegs, was a smelly mass of mildew and
decay. In the carriage-house were three vehicles--a coach with
rat-riddled upholstery and old-fashioned hoop-iron springs eaten through
with rust, a rockaway and a surrey. The latter had collapsed where it
stood. He found a stick, mowed away the festooning cobwebs, and moved
the debris piece-meal.
"There!" he said with satisfaction. "There's a place for the motor--if
Uncle Jefferson ever gets it here."
It was noon when he returned, after a wash-up in the lake, to the meal
with which Aunt Daphne, in a costume dimly suggestive of a bran-meal
poultice with a gingham apron on, regaled him. Fried chicken, corn-bread
so soft and fluffy that it had to be lifted from the pan with a spoon,
browned potatoes, and to his surprise, fresh milk. "Ah done druv ouah
ol' cow ovah, suh," explained Aunt Daphne. "'Case she gotter be milked,
er she run dry ez de Red Sea fo' de chillen ob Izril."
"Aunt Daphne," inquired Valiant with his mouth full, "what do you call
this green thing?"
"Dat? Dat's jes' turnip-tops, suh, wid er hunk er bacon in de pot.
Laws-er-me, et cert'n'y do me good ter see yo' git arter it dat way,
suh. Reck'n yo' got er appertite! Hyuh, Hyuh!"
"I have. I never guessed it before, and it's a magnificent discovery.
However, it suggests unwelcome reflections. Aunt Daphne, how long do you
estimate a man can dine like this on--well, say on a hundred dollars?"
"Er hun'ed dollahs, suh? Dat's er right smart heap o' money, 'deed et
is! Well, suh, 'pen's on whut yo' raises. Ef yo' raises yo' own
gyarden-sass, en chick'ns en aigs, Ah reck'n yo' kin live longah dan dat
ar Methoosalum, en still haf mos' of it in de ol' stockin'."
"Ah! I can grow all those things myself, you think?"
"Yo' cert'n'y _kin_," said Aunt Daphne. "Ev'ybody do. De chick'ns done
peck fo' deyselves en de yuddah things--yo' o'ny gotter 'courage 'em en
dey jes' grows."
Valiant ate his dessert with a thoughtful smile wrinkling his brow. As
he pushed back his chair he smote his hands together and laughed aloud.
"Back to the soil!" he said. "John Valiant, farmer! The miracle of it is
that it sounds good to me. I _want_ to raise my own grub and till my own
soil. I want to be my own man! And I'm beginning to see my way. Crops
will have to wait for another season, but there's water and pasture for
cattle now. There's timber--lots of it--on that hillside, too. I must
look into that."
He filled his pipe and climbed the staircase to the upper floor. Here
the lower hall was duplicated. He proceeded slowly and carefully with
the dusty task of window-opening. There were many bedrooms with great
four-posted, canopied beds and old-fashioned carved furniture of
mahogany and curly-maple, and in one he found a great cedar-lined chest
filled with bed-linen and napery. In these rooms were more evidences of
decay. They showed in faded hues, streaked and discolored finishings,
yellow mildew beneath the glass of framed engravings and unsightly
stains on walls and floors from leaks in the roof. On a dainty
dressing-table had been left a pin-cushion; its stuffing was strewn in a
tiny trickling trail to a mouse-hole in the base-board. The bedroom he
mentally chose for his own was the plainest of all, and was above the
library, fronting the vagabond garden. It had a great black desk with
many glass-knobbed drawers and a book-rack. The volumes this contained
were mostly of the historical sort: a history of the _Middle Plantation,
Meade's Old Churches,_ and at the end a parchment-bound tome inscribed
_The Valiants of Virginia_.
He lingered longest in a room over whose door was painted _The
Hilarium_. It had evidently been a nursery and schoolroom. Here on
the walls were many shelves wound over with networks of cobwebs, and
piled with the oddest assemblage of toys: wooden and splintered
soldiers that had once been bravely painted, dolls in various states of
worn-outness--one rag doll in a calico dress with shoe-button eyes and
a string of bright glass beads round her neck--a wooden box of marbles,
a tattered boxing-glove. There were school-books, too, thumbed and
dog-eared, from _First Reader_ to Caesar's _Gallic Wars_, with names of
small Valiants scrawled on their fly-leaves. He carefully relocked the
door of this room; he wanted to dust those toys and books with his own
hands.
In the upper hall again he leaned from the window, sniffing the
far-flung scent of orchards and peach-blown fence-rows. The soft
whirring sound of a bird's wing went past, almost brushing his startled
face, and the old oaks seemed to stretch their bent limbs with a
faithful brute-like yawn of pleasure. In the room below he could hear
the vigorous sound of Aunt Daphne's hard-driven broom and the sound
flooded the echoing space with a comfortable commotion.
The present task was one after Aunt Daphne's own heart. A small mountain
of dust was growing on the terrace, and as beneath brush and rag the
colors of wall and parquetry stood forth, her face became one shiny
expanse of ebony satisfaction. When the bulldog, returning from his
jaunt, out-stripping Uncle Jefferson, bounced in to prance against her
she smote him lustily with her scrubbing-brush.
"Git outer heah, yo' good-fo'-nuffin' w'ite rapscallyun! Gwine trapse
yo' muddy feet all ovah dis yeah floor, whut Ah jes' scrubbed tell yo'
marstah kin eat off'n et?" She broke off to listen to Uncle Jefferson's
voice outside, directed toward the upper window.
"Dat yo', suh? Yas, suh, dis me. Well, suh, Ah take ol' Sukey out de Red
Road, en Ah hitch huh ter yo' machine-thing, en she done balk. Won't go
nohow ... whut, suh? 'Beat huh ovah de haid?' Yas, suh, done hit huh in
de haid six times wid de whip-han'l, en she look me in de eye en ain'
said er word.... 'Twis' huh tail?' _Me_, suh? No-suh-ree, suh. Mars'
Quarles' boy one time he twis' huh tail en dey sen' him ter de
horspit'l. 'Daid,' suh? No, suh, ain' daid, but et mos' bust him wide
open.... 'Set fiah undah huh?' Yas, suh, done set fiah undah huh. Mos'
burn up de harness, en ain' done no good.... Well, suh, Ah jes' gwineter
say no use waitin' fo' Sukey ter change huh min', so Ah put some
fence-rails undah huh en jock huh up en come home. En Ah's gwine out
arter suppah en Sukey be all right den, suh, Ah reck'n. Yas, suh."
Aunt Daphne plunged out with fire in her eye, but the laugh that came
from above was reassuring. "Never mind, Uncle Jefferson, Miss Sukey's
whims shall be regarded."
Chum, bouncing up the stairs like an animated bundle of springs, met his
master coming down. "Old man," said the latter, "I don't mind telling
you that I'm beginning to be taken with this place. But it's in a bad
way, and it's going to be put in shape. It's a large order, and we'll
have to work like horses. Don't you bother Aunt Daph! You just come with
your Uncle Dudley. He's going to take a look over the grounds."
He went to his trunk and fished out a soft shirt on which he knotted
a loose tie, exchanged his Panama for a slouch hat, and whistling
the barcarole from _Tales of Hoffmann_, went gaily out. "I feel
tremendously alive to-day," he confided to the dog, as he tramped
through the lush grass. "If you see me ladle the muck out of that
fountain with my own fair hands, don't have a fit. I'm liable to do
anything."
His eye swept up and down the slope. "There probably isn't a finer site
for a house in the whole South," he told himself. "The living-rooms
front south and west. We'll get scrumptious sunsets from that back
porch. And on the other side there's the view clear to the Blue Ridge.
And as for this garden, no landscape artist need apply. The outlines are
all here; it needs only to be put back. We'll first rake out the
rubbish, chop down that underbrush and trim the box. The shrubs only
want pruning. Then we'll mend the pool and set the fountain going and
put in some goldfish. Flower-seeds and bulbs are cheap enough, I fancy.
Just think of a bed of black and gold pansies running down to the lake!
And on the other side a wilderness garden. I've seen pictures of them in
the illustrated weeklies. Those rotten posts, under that snarl of vines,
were a pergola. Any old carpenter can rebuild that--I can draw the plans
myself."
He skirted the lake. "Only to grub out some of the lilies--there's too
many of them--and straighten the rim--and weed the pebble margin to
give those green rocks a show. I'll build a little wharf below them to
dive from, and--yes, I'll stock it with spotted trout. Not just to yank
out with a barbed hook, but to make it inhabited. How well a couple of
white swans would look preening in the shade out there! The roof's gone
from that oval summer-house, but it's no trick to put another on."
He penetrated farther into the tangle and came out into a partially
cleared space shaded with great trees, where the grass was matted with
clover into a thick rug, sprinkled with designs worked in bluebells and
field-daisies, with here and there a flaunting poppy, like a scarlet
medallion. He was but a few hundred yards from the house, yet the
silence was so deep that there might have been no habitation within
fifty miles. All at once he stopped short; there was a sudden movement
in the thicket beyond--the sound of light fast footfalls, as of some one
running away.
He made a lunge for the dog, but with a growl Chum tore himself from the
restraining grasp and dashed into the bushes. "A child, no doubt," he
thought as he plunged in pursuit, "and that lubberly brute will scare it
half to death!"
He pulled up with an exclamation. In a narrow wood-path a little
way from him, partly hidden by a windfall, stood a girl, her skirt
transfixed with a wickedly jagged sapling. He saw instantly how it
had happened; the windfall had blocked the way, and she had sprung
clean over it, not noting the screened spear, which now held her as
effectually as any railroad spike. She was struggling with silent
helpless fury to release herself, wrenching viciously at the offending
stuff, which seemed ridiculously stout, and disregarding utterly the
bulldog, frisking madly about her feet with sharp joyous barks.
In another moment Valiant had reached her and met her face, flushed,
half defiant, her eyes a blue gleam of smoldering anger as she
desperately, almost savagely, thrust wild tendrils of flame-colored hair
beneath the broad curved brim of her straw hat. At her feet lay a great
armful of cape jessamines.
A little thrill, light and warm and joyous, ran through him. Until that
instant he had not recognized her.