THE LUCK OF THE LORDS OF LORNE
"Nice of you to drop in, old man," commented Rupert dryly as he shut the
door. "But didn't anyone ever mention to you that gentlemen wipe their
feet before entering strange houses?" He surveyed a line of wet paw
prints across the brick floor.
"Did he get all wet, the poor little--" Ricky was on her knees,
stretching out her hand and positively cooing. The cat put down the paw
he had been licking and regarded her calmly out of round, yellow eyes.
Then he returned to his washing. Val laughed.
"Evidently he is used to the strong, silent type of human, Ricky. I
wonder where he belongs."
"He belongs to us now. Yes him does, doesn't him?" She attempted to
touch the visitor's head. His ears went back and he showed sharp teeth
in no uncertain manner.
"Better let him alone," advised Rupert. "He doesn't seem to be the kind
you can cuddle."
"So I see." Ricky arose to her feet with an offended air. "One would
think that I resembled the more repulsive members of my race."
"In the meantime," Rupert again sought the cupboard, "let's eat."
Half an hour later, fed and well content (even Satan, as the Ralestones
had named their visitor because of his temperament, having condescended
to accept some of the better-done bits of bacon), they sat about the
table staring at the dishes. Now it is a very well-known fact that
dishes do _not_ obligingly leap from a table into a pan of well-soaped
water, slosh themselves around a few times, and jump out to do a spot of
brisk rubbing down. But how nice it would be if they did, thought Val.
"The dishes--" began Ricky in a faint sort of way.
"Must be done. We gather that. How utterly nasty bacon grease looks when
it's congealed." Her younger brother surveyed the platter before him
with mournful interest.
"And the question before the house is, I presume, who's going to wash
them?" Rupert grinned. "This seems to be as good a time as any to put
some sort of a working plan in force. There is a certain amount of
so-called housework which has to be done. And there are three of us to
do it. It's up to us to apportion it fairly. Shall we say, let everyone
care for his or her own room--"
"There are also the little matters of washing, and ironing, and
cleaning," Ricky broke in to remind him.
"And we're down to fifty a month in hard cash. But the tenant farmer on
the other side of the bayou is to supply us with fresh fruit and
vegetables. And our wardrobes are fairly intact. So I think that we can
afford to hire the washing done. We'll take turns cooking--"
"Who's elected to do the poisoning first?" Val inquired with interest.
"I trust we possess a good cook-book?"
"Well, I'll take breakfast tomorrow morning," Rupert volunteered.
"Anyone can boil coffee and toast bread. As for dishes, we'll all pitch
in together. And suppose we start right now."
When the dishes were back again in their neat piles on the cupboard
shelves, Ricky vanished upstairs, to come trailing down again in a
house-coat which she fondly imagined made her look like one of the
better-known screen sirens. The family gathered in an aimless way before
the empty fireplace of the Long Hall. Rupert was filling a black pipe
which allowed him to resemble--in very slight degree, decided Val--an
explorer in an English tobacco advertisement. Val himself was stretched
full length on the couch with about ten pounds of cat attempting to rest
on his center section in spite of his firm refusal to allow the same.
"Br-r-r!" Ricky shivered. "It's cold in here."
"Probably just Uncle Rick passing through--not the weather. No, cat, you
may not sit on that stomach. It's just as full of bacon as yours is and
it wants a nice long rest." Val swept Satan off to the floor and he
resignedly went to roost by the boy's feet in spite of the beguiling
noises Ricky made to attract his attention.
"These stone houses are cold." Rupert scratched a match on the sole of
his shoe. "We ought to have flooring put down over this stone paving. I
saw some wood stacked up in an outhouse when I put the car away. We'll
have it in tomorrow and see what we can do about a fire in the evening."
"And I thought the South was always warm." Ricky examined her hands.
"Whoever," she remarked pleasantly, "took my hand lotion better return
it. The consequences might not be very attractive."
"Are you sure you packed it this morning?" Val asked.
"But of--" Her fingers went to her mouth. "I wonder if I did? I've just
got to have some. We'll drive to town tomorrow and get a bottle."
"Thirty miles or so for a ten-cent bottle of gooey stuff," Val
protested.
"Good idea." Rupert stood with his back to the fireplace as if there
really were a flame or two within its black emptiness. "I've some papers
that LeFleur wants to see. Then there're our boxes at the freight
station to arrange transportation for, and we'll have to see about
getting a newspaper and--"
"Make a list," murmured his brother.
Rupert dropped down upon the wide arm of Ricky's chair and with her only
too willing aid set to work. Val eyed them drowsily. Rupert and
Ricky--or to give her her very formal name in full--Richanda Anne, were
"Red" Ralestones, possessing the thin, three-cornered faces, the dark
mahogany hair, the sharply defined cheek-bones which had been the mark
of the family as far back in history as portraits or written
descriptions existed. The "Red" Ralestones were marked also by height
and a suppleness of body and movement. The men had been fine swordsmen,
the ladies noted beauties. But they were also cursed, Val remembered
vividly, with uncertain tempers.
Rupert had schooled himself to the point where his emotions were
mastered by his will. But Val had seen Ricky enjoy full tantrums, and
the last occasion was not so long ago that the scene had become misty in
his memory. Generous to the point of self-beggary, loyal to a fault, and
incurably romantic, that was a "Red" Ralestone.
Val himself was a "Black" Ralestone, which was a very different thing.
They were a new growth on the family tree, a growth which appeared after
the Ralestones had been exiled to colonial America. His black hair, his
long, dark face of no particular beauty marked with straight, black
brows set in a perpetual frown--that was the sign of a "Black"
Ralestone. They were as strong-willed as the "Reds," but their anger
could be controlled to icy rage.
"Now that you have spent the monthly income," Val suggested as Rupert
added up a long column of minute figures scrawled across the first page
of his pocket note-book, "let's really get away from economics for one
evening. The surroundings suggest something more romantic than dollars
and cents. After all, when did a pirate ever show a saving disposition?
Would the first Roderick--"
"The Roderick who brought home the Luck?" Ricky laughed. "But he brought
home a fortune, too, didn't he, Rupert?"
Her brother relit his pipe. "Yes, but a great many lords came home from
the Crusades with their pockets filled. Sir Roderick de la Stone thought
the Luck worth his entire estate even after he was made Baron
Ralestone."
Ricky shivered delicately. "Not altogether nice people, those ancestors
of ours," she observed.
"No," Val grinned. "By rights this room should be full of ghosts instead
of the beat of just one. How many Ralestones died violently? Seven or
eight, wasn't it?"
"But the ones who died in England should haunt Lorne," argued Ricky,
half seriously.
"Well then, that sort of confines us to the crews of the ships our
great-great-great-grandfather scuttled," her brother replied.
"Rupert," Ricky turned and asked impulsively, "do you really believe in
the Luck?"
Rupert looked up at the empty niche. "I don't know--No, I don't. Not the
way that Roderick and Richard and all the rest did. But something that
has seven hundred years of history behind it--that means a lot."
"'Then did he take up ye sword fashioned by ye devilish art of ye East
from two fine blades found in ye tomb,'" Val quoted from the record of
Brother Anselm, the friar who had accompanied Sir Roderick on his
crusading. "Do you suppose that that part's true? Could the Luck have
been made from two other swords found in an old tomb?"
"Not impossible. The Saracens were master metal workers. Look at the
Damascus blades."
"It all sounds like a fairy-tale," commented Ricky. "A sword with magic
powers beaten out of two other swords found in a tomb. And the whole
thing done under the direction of an Arab astrologer."
"You've got to admit," broke in Val, "that Sir Roderick had luck after
it was given to him. He came home a wealthy man and he died a Baron. And
his descendants even survived the Wars of the Roses when four-fifths of
the great English families were wiped out."
"'And fortune continued to smile,'" Rupert took up the story, "'until a
certain wild Miles Ralestone staked the Luck of his house on the turn of
a card--and lost.'"
"O-o-oh!" Ricky squirmed forward in her chair. "Now comes the pirate.
Tell us that, Rupert."
"You know the story by heart now," he objected.
"We never heard it here, where some of it really happened. Tell it,
please, Rupert!"
"In your second childhood?" he asked.
"Not out of my first yet," she answered promptly. "Pretty please,
Rupert."
"Miles Ralestone, Marquess of Lorne," he began, "rode with Prince Rupert
of the Rhine. He was a notorious gambler, a loose liver, and a cynic.
And he even threw the family Luck across the gaming table."
"'The Luck went from him who did it no honor,'" Val repeated slowly. "I
read that in that old letter among your papers, Rupert."
"Yes, the Luck went from him. He survived Marston Moor; he survived the
death of his royal master, Charles the First, on the scaffold. He lived
long enough to witness the return of the Stuarts to England. But the
Luck was gone, and with it the good fortune of his line. Rupert, his
son, was but a penniless hanger-on at the royal court; the manor of
Lorne a fire-gutted wreckage.
"Rupert followed James Stuart from England when that monarch became a
fugitive to escape the wrath of his subjects. And the Marquess of Lorne
sank to the role of pot-house bully in the back lanes of Paris."
"And then?" prompted Val.
"And then a miracle occurred. Rupert was employed by his master on a
secret mission to London, and there the Luck came again into his hands.
Perhaps by murder. But he died miserably enough of a heavy cold got by
lying in a ditch to escape Dutch William's soldiers."
"'So is this perilous Luck come again into our hands. Then did I
persevere to mend the fortunes of my house.' That's what Rupert's son
Richard wrote about the Luck," Ricky recalled. "Richard, the first
pirate."
"He did a good job of fortune mending," commented Val dryly. "Married
one of the wealthiest of the French king's wards and sailed for the
French West Indies all in a fortnight. Turned pirate with the approval
of the French and took to lifting the cargoes of other pirates."
"I'll bet that most of his success was due to the Lady Richanda,"
observed Ricky. "She sailed with him dressed in man's clothes. Remember
that miniature of her that we saw in New York, the one in the museum?
All the 'Black' Ralestones are supposed to look like her. Hear that,
Val?"
"At least it was the Lady Richanda who persuaded her husband to settle
ashore," said Rupert. "She was personally acquainted with Bienville and
Iberville who were proposing to rule the Mississippi valley for France
by building a city near the mouth of the river. And 'Black Dick,' the
pirate, obtained a grant of land lying along Lake Borgne and this bayou.
Although the city was not begun until 1724, this house was started in
1710 by workmen imported from England.
"The house of an exile," Rupert continued slowly. "Richard Ralestone was
born in England, but he left there in his tenth year. In spite of the
price on his head, he crept back to Devon in 1709 to see Lorne for the
last time. And it was from the rude sketches he made of ruined Lorne
that Pirate's Haven was planned."
"Why, we saw those sketches!" Ricky's eyes shone with excitement. "Do
you remember, Val?"
Her brother nodded. "Must have cost him plenty to do it," he replied.
"Richard had an immense personal fortune of his own gained from piracy,
and he spared no expense in building. The larger part of the stone in
these walls was brought straight from Europe, just as they later brought
the paving blocks for the streets of New Orleans. When he had done--and
the place was five years a-building because of Indian troubles and other
disturbances--he settled down to live in feudal state. Some of his
former seamen rallied around him as a guard, and he imported blacks from
the islands to work his indigo fields.
"The family continued to prosper through both French and Spanish
domination until the time of American rule."
"Now for Uncle Rick." Ricky settled herself with a wriggle. "This is
even more exciting than Pirate Dick."
"In the year 1788, the time of the great fire which destroyed over half
of New Orleans, twin boys were born at Pirate's Haven. They came into
their heritage early, for their parents died of yellow fever when the
twins were still small children.
"Those were restless times. New Orleans was full of refugees. From
Haiti, where the revolting blacks were holding a reign of terror, and
from France, where to be a noble was to be a dead one, came hundreds.
Even members of the royal house, the Duc d'Orleans and his brother, the
Duc de Montpensier, came for a space in 1798.
"The city had always been more or less lawless and intolerant of
control. Like the New Englanders of the eighteenth century, many
respected merchants were also smugglers."
"And pirates," suggested Val.
"The king of smugglers was Jean Lafitte. His forge--where his slaves
shaped the wrought-iron which was one of the wonders of the city--was a
fashionable meeting-place for the young bloods. He was the height of wit
and fashion--daring openly to placard the walls of the town with his
notices of smugglers' sales.
"And Roderick Ralestone, the younger of the twins, became one of
Lafitte's men. In spite of the remonstrances of his brother Richard,
young Rick withdrew to Barataria with Dominque You and the rest of the
outlawed captains.
"In the winter of 1814 matters came to a head. Richard wanted to marry
an American girl, the daughter of one of Governor Claiborne's friends.
Her father told him very pointedly that since the owners of Pirate's
Haven seemed to be indulging in law breaking, such a marriage was out of
the question. Aroused, Richard made a secret inspection of certain
underground storehouses which had been built by his pirate
great-grandfather and discovered that Rick had put them in use again for
the very same purpose for which they had been first intended--the
storing of loot.
"He waited there for his brother, determined to have it decided once and
for all. They quarreled bitterly. Both were young, both had bad tempers,
and each saw his side as the right of the matter--"
"Regular Ralestones, weren't they?" commented Val slyly.
"Undoubtedly," agreed Rupert. "Well, at last Richard started for the
house, his brother in pursuit.
"Then they fought, here in this very hall. And not with words this time,
but with the rapiers Richard had brought back from France. A slave named
Falesse, who had been the twins' childhood nurse, was the only witness
to the end of that duel. Richard lay face down across the hearth-stone
as she came screaming down the stairs."
Ricky was studying the gray stone.
"By rights," Val agreed with her unspoken thought, "there ought to be a
stain there. Unfortunately for romance, there isn't."
"Rick was standing by the door," Rupert continued. "When Falesse reached
his brother, he laughed unsteadily and half raised his sword in a
duelist's salute. Then he was gone. But there were two swords on the
floor. And that niche was empty.
"When he fled into the night storm with his brother's blood staining his
hands, Rick Ralestone took the Luck of his house with him.
"After almost a year of invalidism, Richard recovered. He never married
his American beauty. But in 1819 he took a wife, a young Creole lady
widowed by the Battle of New Orleans. Of Rick nothing was heard again,
although his brother searched diligently for more than thirty years."
"How," Val grinned at his brother, "did Richard explain the little
matter of the ghost which is supposed to walk at night?"
"I don't know. But when the Civil War broke out, Richard's son Miles was
the master of Pirate's Haven. The once-great fortune of the family had
shrunk. Business losses in the city, floods, a disaster at sea, had
emptied the family purse--"
"The Luck getting in its dirty work by remote control," supplied the
irrepressible Val.
"Perhaps. Young Miles had married in his teens, and the call to the
Confederate colors brought both his twin sons under arms as well as
their father.
"Miles, the father, fell in the First Battle of Bull Run. But Miles, the
son and elder of the twins, a lieutenant of cavalry, came out of the war
the only surviving male of his family.
"His brother Richard had been wounded and was home on sick leave when
the Northerners occupied New Orleans. Betrayed by one of his former
slaves, a mulatto who bore a grudge against the family, he was murdered
by a gang of bullies and cutthroats who had followed the invading army.
"Richard had been warned of their raid and had managed to hide the
family valuables in a secret place--somewhere within this very hall,
according to tradition."
Val and Ricky sat up and looked about with wondering interest.
"But Richard was shot down in cold blood when he refused to reveal the
hiding-place. His brother and some scouts, operating south without
orders, arrived just in time to witness the last act. Miles Ralestone
and his men summarily shot the murderers. But where Richard had so
carefully concealed the last of the family treasure was never
discovered.
"The war beggared the Ralestones. Miles went north in search of better
luck, and this place was allowed to molder until it was leased in 1879
to a sugar baron. In 1895 it was turned over to a family distantly
connected with ours. And since then it has been leased. We have had in
all four tenants."
"But," Ricky broke in, "since the Luck went we have not prospered. And
until it returns--"
Rupert tapped out his pipe against one of the fire irons. "It's nothing
but a folk-tale," he told her.
"It isn't!" Ricky contradicted him vehemently. "And we've made a good
beginning anyway. We've come back."
"If Rick took the Luck with him, I don't see how we have an earthly
chance of finding it again," Val commented.
"It came back once before after it had gone from us," reminded his
sister. "And I think that it will again. At least I'll hope so."
"Outside of the superstition, it would be well worth having. The names
of the heads and heirs of the house are all engraved along the blade,
from Sir Roderick on down. Seven hundred years of history scratched on
steel." Rupert stretched and then glanced at his wrist-watch. "Ten to
ten, and we've had a long day. Who's for bed?"
"I am, for one." Val swung his feet down from the couch, disturbing
Satan who opened one yellow eye lazily.
Ricky stood by the fireplace fingering the wreath of stiff flowers
carved in the stone. Val took her by the arm.
"No use wondering which one you push to reveal the treasure," he told
her.
She looked up startled. "How did you know what I was thinking about?"
she demanded.
"My lady, your thoughts, like little white birds--"
"Oh, go to bed, Val. When you get poetical I know you need sleep. Just
the same," she hesitated with one foot on the first tread of the stair,
"I wonder."