"IMMEDIATELY I COME TO YOU!"
And so the time passed until the morning upon which the same railroad
train which had brought young Robert Carruthers down into the valley
home of his forefathers, arrived with yet another son of France and
his secretaries and servants. All were in attendance at the station of
arrival, from the Secretary of State, the General Carruthers, who in
his large car was to take the Count de Bourdon to the Gouverneur's
Mansion for immediate introduction, down to good Cato in a very new
gray coat and a quite shiny black hat.
"Stand right alongside, Robert," commanded my Uncle, the General
Robert, as he arranged with impatience a large white rose I had placed
upon the lapel of his very elegant gray coat. "I never did like
heathens. They make my flesh crawl. Be sure and repeat slowly all he
says, damn him!"
"He will speak to you in English very like unto that I use, I feel
sure, my Uncle Robert," I said with a great soothing.
"He will not, sir, he will not!" answered my Uncle, the General
Robert, with a great impatience. "Half the blood in your veins is the
good red blood I gave you, sir, and never forget that. Look what a man
it has made of you!"
"Yes, my Uncle Robert," I answered with a great sadness but also some
amusement. In my heart I prayed that always when I had left him he
would think that blood to be the good red blood of a man of honor and
not of a woman of lies. It might be that some day he would be proud
that still another man of his house had died in battle for France
and--never know.
It was while my eyes were covered with a mist of tears that I heard
the great railway train approaching, which was perhaps to bring me my
dishonor, and I drew those tears back into my heart and stepped
forward to the steps of the car from which I could see a very slight
and short but very distinguished looking Frenchman about to descend.
"I thank the good God I have never before encountered him," I said in
my heart as I stood in front of him.
"Lieutenant, the Count de Bourdon, I make you welcome to the State of
Harpeth, in the name of my Uncle, the Secretary of that State," I said
to him in the language of his own country as I clapped together my
heels and gave to him the bow from the waist of a French gentleman who
is not a soldier. "Will you permit that I lead you to that Uncle?"
"Many thanks, Monsieur, is it Carruthers I name you after your
distinguished relative?" he made answer to me as he returned my bow
with first one of its kind and then a military salute.
"Robert Carruthers, sir, and at your service," I made answer to him
with a great formality. And as I spoke I saw that he gave to me a
glance of great curiosity and would have asked a question but at that
moment my Uncle, the General Robert, stood beside us.
"I present to you the General Carruthers, Secretary of the State of
Harpeth, Monsieur the Lieutenant, the Count de Bourdon of the
forty-fourth Chasseurs of the Republique of France." I said with again
a great ceremony and a very deep bow.
"I'm mighty glad to welcome you to Old Harpeth, Count. How did you
make the trip down? said my Uncle, the General Robert, as he held out
his large and beautiful old hand and gave to the Count Edouard de
Bourdon such a clasp that must have been to him most painful. And as I
beheld that very tall grand old soldier of that Lost Cause look down
upon that very polished and small representative of the French army,
that American eagle began a flapping of his wings against the strings
of my heart where I had not before discovered him to reside.
"But he is not as my Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles," I said in
reproof to that eagle, which made a quiet in my heart so that I could
listen to the words returned by the man of France to the man of
America.
"I thank you, Monsieur the Secretary of Harpeth; my journey was of
great pleasure and comfort," were the words which he returned in very
nice English.
"Then we'll go right up and see Governor Faulkner at the Capitol
before lunch, Count, if that suits you," my Uncle, the General Robert,
said with a very evident relief at those words of English coming from
that French mouth. "Here's my car over this way and this is Mr.
Clendenning, who'll look after the rest of the gentlemen in your party
and bring them on up to the Capitol."
"Monsieur," said the Lieutenant, Count de Bourdon, with another bow
and then a quick recovery as he saw that he must take the hand of
Buzz, held out to him in great cordiality. These handshakes of America
are very confusing to those of Europe.
I saw a great laughter almost to explosion in the eyes of my Buzz at
the very little man who had such a great manner, and I made a hurrying
of him and my Uncle, the General Robert, to the large car standing
beside the station.
"I will precede you in my Cherry," I said as I saw both the gentlemen
seated together upon the back seat of the large black machine.
"No you don't; you take your seat right in here with us, to be on hand
if any bridge of this international conversation breaks down under the
Count and me," answered my Uncle, the General Robert, with stern
command.
"Is it that the young Monsieur Carruthers had an education in France?"
asked the Lieutenant, the Count de Bourdon. "He has the air of
French--shall I say, youth?" And as he spoke again I saw a gleam of
deeply aroused interest in his eyes which made my knees to tremble in
their tweed trousers.
"Born there; son of my brother, who died at the Marne," made answer to
the question my Uncle, the General Robert.
"It is now that I make a remembrance. That Capitaine Carruthers was
the husband to the very beautiful Marquise de Grez and Bye. In her
youth I was her friend. I did not know--" but as the Lieutenant, the
Count de Bourdon, was making this discovery which sent a thrill of
fear into the toes of my very shoes, the car stopped at the main
entrance of the Capitol and halfway down the long flight of steps
stood His Excellency, the great Gouverneur Faulkner of the State of
Harpeth, waiting to receive the guest who came on a mission to him
from a great land across the waters. Until I die and even into a space
beyond that, I shall take that picture of magnificence which was made
by my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner as he stood in the May sunlight with
his bronze hair in a gleaming. I thought him to be a great statue of
Succor as he held out both of his strong hands to the smaller man who
had come from a stricken land for his help.
"_Le bon Dieu_ keep of his heart a friend of France," I prayed as
I watched those hands clasp as my Uncle, the General Robert, made the
introduction.
And all the long hours of that long day were as dreams of sadness and
fear to me as I went about the many duties of entertainment laid upon
me. At luncheon at that Club of Old Hickory I sat opposite the small
Frenchman who sat on the right hand of my Gouverneur Faulkner, and
opposite to me sat my Uncle, the General Robert. No business was in
discussion at that time but I could see those eyes of French
shrewdness make a darting from one face to another and ever they came
back to me with a great puzzle which gave to me terrible fear.
To all the plans for his entertainment he gave an assent of delight
and for that two days' journey down into the grazing lands of the
Harpeth Valley he had a great eagerness until told that it was to be
undertaken upon the morrow.
"Is it not that we will be occupied on the morning of to-morrow with
the signing of those papers of importance, Your Excellency?" he asked
with a grave annoyance which was under a fine control.
"The Secretary of State, General Carruthers, and I think it will be
best that you see the grazing lands of Harpeth and some of the mules
being put into condition before the signing of the contracts," was
what was "handed out to him," as my Buzz would have expressed it, by
my Gouverneur Faulkner with a great courtesy and kindliness as he
helped himself to some excellent chicken prepared in a fry. I could
see a great start of alarm come into the eyes of that small
Lieutenant, the Count de Bourdon, at those calm words, but he gave not
a sign of it. In my heart was a great hope that something had been
discovered for the protection of my soldiers of France, and I also
took to myself a portion of that excellent chicken and did make the
attempt to consume it as I beheld all of those great gentlemen
performing. I believe that under excitement men possess a much greater
calmness of appetite than do women.
"Monsieur le Gouverneur, it is not necessary that I behold those lands
and those mules; the signature of the great Gouverneur of the State of
Harpeth will make a mule to grow from a desert, in the eyes of the
French Government," he said with a smile of great charm spreading over
his very small countenance.
But just at this moment, when a reply would have been of an
awkwardness to make, the music, which is made by a most delightful
band of black men for all eating in that Club of Old Hickory, began to
play the great Marseillaise, and with one motion all of the gentlemen
in that dining room rose to their feet in respect to the distinguished
guest of that Old Hickory Club. Also many friendly glances were cast
upon me, which I returned with a smile of great gratitude.
"Yes, the pen is mightier than the mule stick in his eyes, the
scoundrel," remarked my Uncle, the General Robert, as I drove to the
Capitol with him in his car, while the Gouverneur Faulkner took his
guest with him in his.
"Is any proof been found that he shall not do this robbery to France,
my Uncle Robert?" I asked with great eagerness.
"Trap is about ready to spring, but not quite. God, but Jeff Whitworth
is a skilled thief! I know what he is up to but I can't quite get it
on the surface. Keep the French robber busy, boy, for a little longer,
and I'll land him. Here we are at the office! Now you get busy keeping
them busy--and I'll land 'em. If not, I'll go and show France what
real fighting is and I'll take you with me into the worst trench
they've got! Battles, indeed--they ought to have been at Chickamauga.
Now depart!" With which words my Uncle, the General Robert, got out of
the car and left me to direct it to wherever I chose.
"I have a warmth at heart that the three men most beloved of me would
go onto the French battle line with me," I murmured to myself as the
black chauffeur drove me back to that Club of Old Hickory to get me
again in company of my Buzz. "And yet it is the custom of women to
believe that they command the deepest affection of which a man is
possessed. And, _helas_, it is believed to be impossible for a
comrade that he be also a lover!"
It has been my good fortune to be one of the guests at many very
brilliant receptions of much state in some of the very grand and
ancient palaces of the different countries of Europe, but at none of
them have I seen a greater brilliancy than at the one given in his
Mansion by the Gouverneur Faulkner of the State of Harpeth in America.
All of that old Mansion, which has the high ceilings and the
decorations of a palace, if not quite the size, was adorned with very
large masses of a most lovely and handsome flower, which is of many
shades of a pink hue set in dark and shining leaves and which is
called the rhododendron. There were many lights and music of a
softness I have never heard equaled, because the souls of those black
men seem to be formed for a very strange kind of music. Also I had
never beheld women of a more loveliness than those of the State of
Harpeth, who had come from many small cities near to Hayesville at an
invitation of very careful selection for their beauty by my Buzz.
"Let's give him a genuine dazzle," he had remarked while making a list
for the sending of the cards.
And most beautiful of all those beautiful _grande dames_ was that
Madam Patricia Whitworth, who, with her husband, stood at the side of
His Excellency, the great Gouverneur Faulkner, for the receiving of
his guests. Her eyes of the blue flowers set in the snow of crystals
were in a gleaming and the costume that she wore was but a few wisps
of gossamer used for the revealing of her radiant body. In my black
and stiff attire of the raven I stood near to the other hand of the
Gouverneur Faulkner and there was such an anger for her in my heart
that it was difficult that I made a return of the smile she cast upon
me at every few minutes. Was there a mockery in that smile, that she
had discovered my woman's estate and was using her own beauty for a
challenge to me? I could not tell nor could I judge exactly what the
smile of boldness which the Lieutenant, the Count de Bourdon, cast
upon me, might mean. And in doubt and anxiety I stood there in that
great salon for many hours to make conversation with the guest of
honor easy with those who came to him for presentation, until at last
I was so weary that I could not make even a good night to my Uncle,
the General Robert, when we entered, long after midnight, the doors of
Twin Oaks.
When in my own apartment, alone with the beautiful Grandmamma, I cast
myself upon the bed upon which my father had had birth, and wept with
all my woman's heart which beat so hard under that attire of the
raven.
"Scarcely one more day and perhaps I must flee in dishonor from all
the love of these friends," I sobbed to myself, but deeper than all
that I wept for the picture of that beautiful woman at the side of my
beloved Gouverneur Faulkner.
And then suddenly as I lay in my weeping the telephone upon the table
beside my bed gave a loud ringing in the darkness that was long after
midnight. Very quickly from fear I covered my head with my pillow and
waited with a great fluttering of heart.
Then a second time it rang with a great fury and I perceived that I
must make a response to it.
I arose and took that receiver into my hand and spoke with a fine
though husky calmness.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Is that you, Robert?" came the voice of my beloved Gouverneur, which
made the heart of that anguished Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye,
beat into a sudden great happiness though also alarm.
"Yes, Your Excellency."
"Can you dress very quietly, get your car and come up here to the
Mansion without letting anybody know of it?"
"I will do what you command."
"I need you, boy, and I need you quick."
"I come."
"Stop the car at the street beyond the side door and come in that way.
Cato will let you in. Come to my bedroom quietly so as not to wake
Jenkins. Can you find your way?"
For just one single long second that _grande dame_, Roberta, the
Marquise of Grez and Bye, cowered in fear upon her warm bed in the
house of her Uncle, the General Robert, at the thought of going out
into the night at the command of a man, and then that devoted
daredevil, Mr. Robert Carruthers, answered into the telephone to the
Gouverneur Faulkner:
"Immediately I come to you."