’POSSUM AND POKER
Henry Power was detailing to him in a low and gentle voice a series of
reminiscences of lurid, old days along the river. The old man had no
sort of objection to recalling his submerged past, and Lockwood was
beginning to get interested, when supper was announced.
That was a meal never to be forgotten. It was served on china with a
magnificent amount of gold decoration, and three glasses and a
champagne bottle stood at every place but two—those of Louise and of
her father. A sumptuous boiled ham appeared immediately, along with a
baked ’possum and sweet potatoes; and in a torrent, it seemed, with
these came sweet potatoes boiled, fried and preserved in sirup, mashed
Irish potatoes, okra, rice, olives, salad, hot biscuits, and several
kinds of cornbread.
Jackson Power opened the wine, with a great popping and joviality. It
was extremely effervescent and sweet, and was probably synthetic,
though the label was printed in French. The boys drank it in quantity;
Hanna more sparingly. Louise took only water, and old Henry consumed
large cups of strong black coffee.
Hanna sat directly opposite Lockwood, and the woods rider compelled
himself to meet his enemy’s eye with coolness. Hanna had changed
little since he was McGibbon; he was handsome as ever, and as suave
and dignified, but Lockwood had the key to that face now, and he read
behind the hard mouth, the hard, watchful gray eyes. Hanna, for his
part, had been observing Lockwood with a good deal of unobtrusive
curiosity, though they had hardly exchanged three sentences. At last
he said, across the table:
“You’re not an Alabama man, Mr. Lockwood?”
“No. Blue-grass Kentuckian,” Lockwood answered.
“I know that country well. Were you ever in Virginia?”
“I’ve been in Richmond and Norfolk.”
“There are Lockwoods in Richmond. No kin of yours, are they? No? Well,
it’s not an uncommon name.”
The conversation turned, but Lockwood caught Hanna’s slightly puzzled
expression turned upon him at intervals. Some chord of memory had been
touched, if not fully sounded. The danger had perhaps been greater
than he thought; but he felt it was past now; and he was not afraid of
being severely catechised at any Southern dinner table.
For he was evidently the guest of honor to-night, and they watched
over his welfare assiduously. Preserved figs, pie with whipped cream,
and an ethereal sort of pudding finished the repast; and then Tom
passed a box of cigars and one of cigarettes. The men drifted back to
the front gallery to smoke, and Louise disappeared somewhere. It was
dark and warm on the gallery now, and fragrant with honeysuckle.
Lockwood found no enjoyment in the situation; he was afraid that Hanna
would come over to talk to him, and when he had finished his cigar he
spoke of leaving. At the camp he had to be out at daylight.
“Hold on,” Tom objected. “It ain’t late, and we-all are fixin’ to play
a little poker to-night.”
“Well——” Lockwood hesitated.
“Mr. Lockwood’ll play or not, jest as he damn well likes,” said Henry
effectively.
“Then I reckon I won’t play to-night,” said Lockwood, who had heard
too many tall tales of the sort of poker played in this house. “I’ll
watch you for a while, maybe.”
Shortly after this there was a halloo down the road, and they heard
the soft trampling as the Fenway boys rode into the yard—a pair of
brown-faced, handsome young giants, in careful black coats and
collars, the sons of a well-to-do planter five miles back from the
river, where the land was better. Thereupon the whole party, excepting
the old man, returned to the dining room, where the table had been
cleared.
Drinks were handed round, cards and chips produced. Lockwood declined
a hand, but sat back and looked on with interest. It was no large
game—a ten-cent ante and dollar limit—but from the first it was
apparent that Tom Power was disposed to force the pace. He lost a
hundred dollars in half an hour; then won a jack pot of sixty dollars,
and began to regain, and to go ahead. Corn whisky was going now, and
he was recklessly ready to make or break himself or anybody else.
But it was Hanna’s game that Lockwood watched most closely. He had a
suspicion that Hanna was playing the card sharper in this house,
winning great sums from the Powers, but he was forced to admit that he
could see no indication of it to-night.
Luck was tending to drift toward one of the Fenway boys, who
accumulated a great stack of chips before him. Tom cursed freely but
cheerfully, and took another drink. Lose or win, he was enjoying
himself. His brother was playing recklessly also, but winning a
little. The room was growing thick with smoke, in spite of the open
windows; the players were all inclined to grow a little noisy, and
eventually Lockwood’s interest waned.
He went to the open window to breathe, and on the dim gallery he
perceived Henry Power, his feet on the railing, a pipe in his mouth. A
little farther away he saw the gleam of a white dress in the faintly
sweet darkness.
He went quietly around to the door and upon the gallery. It was a hot,
dark evening, with the moon not yet risen. Overhead the stars glowed
like white fires, and low in the south, over the vast pine forests,
there was a rapid intermittence of distance, silent lightning.
“May I come out?” he asked, feeling for a chair. “Aren’t you a poker
player, either, Mr. Power?”
“Papa’s asleep,” said Louise in an undertone. “He doesn’t very often
play cards, except a very small game sometimes with old friends. Not
like _this_.”
“It does look like a pretty fast game to-night,” Lockwood admitted.
Louise turned her face toward him, and even in the gloom he thought it
looked extraordinarily serious. Through the open window came a
tremendous burst of laughter. Somebody’s bluff had been called.
Away from the gallery the night lay black and hot and impenetrable. At
moments of stillness in the cardroom the silence was like a material
heaviness. Then suddenly and sweetly, far away through the woods,
sounded the mellow, musical call of a horn, a hunter’s horn, such as
is still used in southern Alabama. The nocturnal fox hunters use
them—a horn made of a cow horn scraped thin, without reeds or anything
inside it. It needs training to make it sound at all, but an expert
can make its note carry five miles. The long, plaintive call sounded
again, curiously repeated.
Henry Power roused himself partially, with a grunt.
“Seems like I heard a horn blowin’,” he said drowsily. “Some fellers
gittin’ up a fox-chase? But thar ain’t no moon.”
The most hardened English fox-hunter would pale at these mild midnight
fox-chases of Alabama, in which horsemen and hounds tear madly through
the densest woods, through swamps, jungles, bayous and sloughs, by
moonlight generally too pale to show the perils. It was just the
sport, Lockwood, thought, that would appeal to the Power boys, and at
that moment Jackson came quickly out upon the gallery, and listened.
Again the far-away horn blew.
“Like to be out on a fox-chase to-night myself,” he remarked. “Want to
go, when the moon gits up? We kin let you have a horse. No? Well, I
reckon I’ll just give ’em a call myself.”
He took down a horn that Lockwood had noticed hanging by the doorway,
and went down the steps, listening. A third time the distant call
blew, and Jackson answered it in a series of rising and long-falling
notes that echoed far away through the pine woods. There was another
blast from the distant hunter, and the boy came back and replaced the
instrument.
“Show ’em that somebody else kin blow a horn,” he said cheerfully; but
as he passed into the light Lockwood noticed that his face was
serious. Perhaps he had been losing heavily.
Old Henry dozed peacefully again.
The far-away blowing of the horn of the invisible hunter, the
extraordinary wildness and remoteness of the whole scene, the whole
episode struck Lockwood’s imagination powerfully.
“Not much like New Orleans, is it?” he remarked, thinking of the
rattle and racket of the street past Lyman & Fourget’s motor shop.
“I was thinking of that,” said Louise. “It all seems so strange,
though I was brought up in these woods. I never thought it would seem
so strange when I came back.”
“How long were you in New Orleans?” he asked.
“Mr. Lockwood, what have you heard about me?” she countered suddenly.
“Why—not much,” he stammered. “I heard that you went away to the city,
some years ago. Mighty courageous thing to do, it seems to me.”
“A wild and rash thing, you mean. So it surely was; but it turned out
all right, and I’m glad I did it. Of course you know our story. All
the country is talking of it. We lived ten miles up the river, in a
cabin, very little better than niggers. I couldn’t stand it. There was
no life for me, no future. I was only seventeen when I went away. I
never expected to come back. Think of it—a country girl from the big
swamps. I’d only once been on a railway train in my life. It makes me
tremble to think what might have happened to me, but I must have had
luck, for I never had any great amount of trouble. Everybody was nice
to me—almost. It’s only in the South that a girl could have got
through so well.”
“You found the life you wanted?”
“Well—not to perfection. You were at Lyman & Fourget’s, too, you know.
But it was a better life, and I might have stayed. Then came the great
change in our fortunes. But it wasn’t the money that brought me back.
Everybody thinks it was, but it wasn’t. There were more reasons than
one. I knew that papa and the boys wanted me back, and they needed me
mighty bad—worse than when we were poor. Mamma has been dead for
years, you know, and I don’t know what this place would have come to,
if I hadn’t taken the helm.”
In the dining room there was another great burst of laughter, and a
crash of falling chips. The pungent cigar smoke floated out through
the window.
“Do you like it here?” said Lockwood gently.
“Yes—but I didn’t think it would be like this,” with a gesture toward
the open window.
“Poker?”
“Yes—everything. You’ve seen something; you’ll see more. I can’t blame
the boys so much. They’re the best fellows in the world. But they
haven’t a thing to do; they grew up idle, and now their pockets are
full of money, and they’re bursting with life, and they’re always
looking for something new to play with. And Mr. Hanna——”
“Yes?” said Lockwood, with intense interest.
Just then old Power awoke with a sudden snort. He took down his feet
from the railing, yawned and looked about confusedly.
“You-all must ’scuse me. Reckon I’ve sure enough been asleep. I’m used
ter goin’ to bed with the birds an’ gittin’ up with the sun. I reckon
I’m a-goin’ to bed now. You’ll ’scuse me, Mr. Lockwood, sir. You young
folks stay up long’s you want to. Good night, sir.”
He went indoors, yawning. But the thread of confidence was broken, and
a not quite comfortable silence ensued.
“I have to be up at daylight, too,” Lockwood said at last. “So I
reckon I’d better slip quietly away without disturbing the card
party.”
The girl did not make any objection. She arose as he did.
“Well, I hope you’ll come again to see us,” she said, just a little
hesitantly. “You must get to know the boys better. You know, they’ve
both taken a great liking to you.”
“I like them both immensely,” Lockwood assured her sincerely.
“The fact is,” she went on, “I do hope you get to be friends with
them. I think it would be good for them to have you for a friend.
You’ll think it’s strange for me to say this, but after all we’ve
known each other a long time—in New Orleans. You see, Mr. Hanna is the
only friend we have here who knows anything of the world. I know far
more than the boys do, but, of course, I’m only their sister, and they
wouldn’t take my opinion on anything. But Mr. Hanna——”
“You don’t trust his opinion?”
“No—no! I don’t say that. But still, two opinions are always better
than one, and I’d like the boys to get your view of things. We can’t
have too many friends, anyway.”
“I’ll certainly be delighted if your brothers will count me a friend,”
said Lockwood. “I hope that you, too, will count me so?”
Louise did not make any answer whatever to this. Lockwood secured his
hat and prepared to go, feeling that he had perhaps said too much. But
she gave him her hand at the steps with a charming smile and answered
him.
“Certainly I’ll count you as a friend, and we’ll expect you to drop in
at any time, whenever you happen to be riding past. The boys will look
for you.”
“And you, too?”
“Of course!” she laughed. “Since I’m inviting you.”