laughed again.
"What have you-all been doing to the old fellow?"
"Ah haven't any idea."
"He says you talked it over yesterday."
"You hardly could say we discussed it," said the Doctor, dryly. "He
insisted that Ah knew the drift o' his remarks, which Ah didn't, and
rung in something about a man on a white horse."
"Who was he?"
"Blamed if Ah know. Ah begin to think, like Bud, the man's sick. He
certainly was angry over something, and he used pretty strong
language."
"Swearing?"
"No. Told me Ah lied."
Bob whistled again.
"That warmed you under the collar, I suspect?"
"It did wilt mah linen a trifle. However, Ah took it that, being a
foreigner, he didn't know just how strong a word he was employing, so
Ah drove off and left him."
"I reckon from this," holding up the letter, "he did know, and meant
just what he said. It looks as if you'd been too lenient. You ought to
have given him a biff or two on the spot."
"Maybe Ah had oughter."
Morgan pulled his beard thoughtfully.
Bob read the letter through once more.
"Quaint English, isn't it? The idea of a regular challenge gets me. I
don't know when I've come across anything funnier."
"The notion ain't so novel to me, but duels are scarce nowadays. The
State ain't so overly encouraging to them. Hand me down those Statutes
and let me see exactly how they fix us."
Bob took the book from the shelf against the wall, and the Doctor
turned over the pages.
"Here it is, in the Constitution. 'Article XIV., Section 2. Penalty for
fighting a duel. No person who shall hereafter fight a duel, or assist
in the same as a second, or send, accept, or knowingly carry a
challenge therefor, or agree to go out of the State to fight a duel,
shall hold any office in this State.' H'm," sniffed the Doctor.
"Strikes me that won't prevent a lot of people from fighting. It
discriminates against the would-be office-holder, but not against _me_,
who wouldn't swallow an office if you put it in mah mouth."
"Or von Rittenheim, who wouldn't know one if he saw it! Perhaps it's a
delicate tribute to the desire of all North Carolinians to serve their
State."
"What disturbs me," said Dr. Morgan, shutting the book, "is that Ah
like the fellow, and Ah don't want to shoot him all up fo' nothing.
And, as Ah said befo', Ah sho' do think the fever's coming on him."
"What are you going to do?"
"Blest if Ah know!"
"What answer did you send?"
"Ah told Bud to tell him Ah'd attend to it when the mud dried."
"Good. That'll give you two or three days to find out what's the matter
with him. Oh, what a joke, what a joke!"
Bob subsided into a chair, overcome with joy at the idea of his father
as a participant in a formal duel.
"Let me know how it comes on, won't you, sir? May I be your second?"
"No," returned the Doctor, hunting his place in the discarded novel.
"Ah'm laying off to have you governor some day, and Ah don't want to
have you disqualified this early!"
Bob grinned appreciatively, and again explored the clouds.
"I'm going to see Sydney. May I show her this?"
Bob took his father's "H'm" for an assent, and went out to saddle his
horse.
Von Rittenheim, sitting before the fire with _Wallenstein's Lager_ on
his knee, but with eyes bent upon the flames that burst with tiny
explosions from the logs, and with mind wandering far from thoughts of
Schiller,--von Rittenheim was waiting with what patience he could
command for Bud's return.
With the falling of the wind at dusk the rain ceased. Friedrich lighted
his lamp and opened his door to look up the road, a view not commanded
by his single window.
He prepared his evening meal of coffee and bread and the batter-cakes
that he had learned to like and then to make in this land of the
frying-pan. Still Bud did not come. At eleven o'clock he went to bed,
for he knew that no countryman, unless he were going for the doctor,
would be abroad at that hour, with such mud under foot.
The next day's noon brought no news of the recreant messenger, and von
Rittenheim went to the Yarebroughs' cabin in search of him.
"He ain' home," Melissa said, in the raised voice that she felt to be
necessary to the German's understanding of her English. "He's gone to
shoot cotton-tails. Ah 'low Ah'll make you-all a pie, 'f ye like," she
added, offering this practical sympathy to the suffering that she saw
written on his face.
"A pie of cotton-tails! Delightful! It will give me pleasure," said von
Rittenheim, politely, with vague notions of birds floating through his
brain. "Did he--Bud--br-ring no message for me yesterday in the
afternoon?"
"No. He said the Doctor 'lowed he'd 'tend to hit--what yo' letter was
about--when the mud dried, 'n Bud reckoned that wasn' no message, 'n
hit wasn' no use goin' over to tell you jus' that."
"When the mud dried," repeated Friedrich. "Remarkable! Good-morning,
Mrs. Yarebrough. Most remarkable!" he kept repeating to himself as he
walked home. "He is not afraid, of that I am certain. Why, then, does
he delay? Remarkable!"
VII
In the Southern Appalachians
It was five o'clock, and a pretty girl, Katrina Wendell, was standing
at one of the long windows of the drawing-room at Oakwood, looking out
upon the storm.
She had not Sydney's unusual beauty, nor had she her imperious manner,
the heritage to Southern women from generations of slave-holding
ancestors; but she had charm and a certain distinction, and she had the
stamp with which New York seals her daughters imprinted upon every tuck
and frill of her clever gown.
"Katrina, it isn't polite to look so bored," said her brother John, who
was amusing himself with Sydney's help by drawing caricatures of the
men of the day.
Katrina flushed. She _was_ bored, but John was a beast to mention it.
She had just brought her first season to an ignominious close by
falling in love with the worst match of the year,--Tom Schuyler,
handsome, irrepressible, and penniless. Mrs. Wendell promptly had
refused her consent to the engagement, and, with equal decision and
what Tom called "disgusting alacrity," had sent her daughter South
under her brother's care to accept the hospitality of Mrs. Carroll, a
life-long friend.
Under the circumstances it was not strange that the prospect from the
window did not appeal to Katrina.
John, on the other hand, was reaping his reward for the self-sacrifice
that had made him accept the duty of escorting his sister to North
Carolina. Unlike the martyrs of old who went unprotesting to their
doom, he had obeyed his mother's commands in no submissive spirit. It
was a relief to the keenness of his martyrdom to kick against the
pricks, and kick he did from New York to Flora, during all such parts
of the twenty-four hours as were not occupied in attending to the wants
of his admirable appetite, or in yielding to the refreshment of such
repose as a sleeping-car can offer. Even he felt that his recompense
was undeservedly great when he found himself welcomed at the little
Flora flag-station by Sydney. He was twenty-eight, and at that age a
pretty girl still stands far up on the list of diversions. No,
decidedly, John was not bored.
Katrina made no answer to her brother's accusation.
"Poor Katrina," said Sydney, going to the window and standing beside
her guest. "It is an abominable day for your first one. Just look at
that!"--she summoned John by a glance over her shoulder; "pouring! And
usually we pride ourselves on our view."
Sheets of rain were driving across the field at the foot of the knoll
upon which the house stood. At times the mountains beyond were shut off
entirely. Again the clouds overhead blew past, and through a leaden
light the storms in the distance could be seen, thickening under some
canopy of blackness, or ceasing as the upper mist grew thin.
"What an advantage it gives you to have such a stretch of open
country," said John. "Here you can see a storm coming when it is yet
twenty miles away, and make your plans accordingly; but in New York,
with the horizon line on the roofs of the houses across the street, you
may be caught by a shower that was lurking over the Battery when you
left your own door."
"I can't understand the foliage being so little advanced," said
Katrina. "It's the last of April, and yet the leaves hardly are
starting. They aren't much ahead of the Park."
"You expected a Florida climate, perhaps. We never cease to have winter
letters from people in the North who lament their cold, and wish they
were with us on our 'rose-covered veranda in the Sunny South,' and it
may be zero when we are reading their flights of imagination."
"Is it really ever as cold as that?"
"Not often, but quite often enough. I've known snow as late as the
twentieth of April, and I've been to a picnic on Buzzard Mountain in
January."
"We're always hearing about this wonderful climate. It sounds as if it
were remarkable chiefly for eccentricity."
"Oh, the average temperature is very even. The summers are delightful,
too,--a long warm season instead of a short hot one. Though you may
have fires now and then, it's not cool enough to close the windows,
night or day, from the first of May to the first of October, and yet it
seldom goes over eighty-five."
"It's the equilibrium between altitude and latitude, showing what it
can do, isn't it?" asked John. "The fact that we are half a mile above
the booming waters of the deep, my dear Katrina, counterbalances the
nine hundred miles that lie between us and that large and noisy city to
which I have no doubt your heart is turning fondly."
"Here are some men on horseback, Sydney," said Katrina, again ignoring
her brother.
The wind was dying and the rain was lessening with each fitful gust.
"Are they cavaliers approaching the presence, or hinds of the estate
coming to crave an audience?" demanded John, who professed much
amusement at what he had seen of the semi-feudal manner of life at
Oakwood, and at Sydney's responsibilities with regard to the work of
the farm and to the tenants.
The girl peered into the gathering gloom.
"It must be Bob Morgan. Yes, it is; and that looks like Patton McRae's
black mare."
"By their nags ye shall know them," said John. "Who are these estimable
youths? I look upon them with the eye of jealousy."
"Bob Morgan? Oh, he's Dr. Morgan's son. You passed his house near the
post-office. And the McRaes live at Cotswold; there's a big family of
them. Will you ring for tea, Mr. Wendell?"
"I fly to do your bidding, even though it be to succor my rivals, for
such I feel they are," and he slapped his chest melodramatically.
Much stamping of feet and shaking of garments heralded the announcement
of the two young men by Uncle Jimmy, the old colored butler.
"How good of you both to come in this weather," said Sydney, flashing a
greeting at each one in turn. "You are just in time to prevent Miss
Wendell from being bored to death."
"Delighted to prevent your demise," said Patton, promptly, and attached
himself at once to Katrina's following.
"Uncle Jimmy," said Sydney to the old man who was poking the fire with
an assiduity born of a desire to stay in the room as long as possible,
"tell Mrs. Carroll that tea is just coming in, and that Mr. Bob and Mr.
Patton are here."
"See what you've brought us, Mr. McRae," Katrina was saying, as a ray
of sunshine broke the twilight darkness.
The mountains stood a deep and penetrable blue against a golden break
behind the Balsams. Fierce black clouds hurried across the upper sky,
dragging after them ragged ends of mist, and beneath this roofing the
setting sun aimed its luminous shafts across the _rest_ made by
Pisgah's rugged peak.
No one broke the spell of beauty by a word, but Wendell saw a glance
pass between Sydney and Bob,--the look of sympathy sure of its fellow.
The sound of Mrs. Carroll's cane brought them all to their feet. She
entered, tiny, autocratic, keen, leaning upon Uncle Jimmy's faithful
arm.
"Good afternoon, Bob. Good afternoon, Patton. You are doubly welcome on
this stormy day. Put my chair a little more to the side of the
fireplace, Bob. Yes, Patton, the footstool, if you please. You may go,
James. John, the hook for my cane is on the left of the mantel-piece.
Katrina, tell Sydney to put a shade less cream in my tea than she did
yesterday. No cake, thank you, John, but a rusk,--yes, a rusk appeals
to me. Bob, what wild thing did you do on that horse of yours on your
way here?"
"Not a thing, Mrs. Carroll. He came along like a Shetland pony. Gray
Eagle doesn't like rain. It depresses him."
"Patton is riding the black mare to-day, grandmother," called Sydney
from behind her tea equipage.
The old lady raised her eyes in comical despair and shook her head
mournfully.
"You certainly have courage, my dear child."
"Only the courage of a Cotswold lion, I'm afraid. But you mustn't be
distressed about her, she's really beginning to do Sydney credit."
"You see, Mr. Wendell, Black Monday was raised on the place here, and
she's been the hardest colt to break of any we ever had. Patton owns
her now, but I feel a personal responsibility for her because he took
her out of my hands before she was thoroughly quiet."
"I see," nodded John, gravely, in accord with Sydney's seriousness.
"You fear some burst of girlish exuberance."
"Did you see her roll in her saddle just as we were coming out of
church Sunday?" asked Patton, turning eagerly to Sydney.
"How do you dare to use such half-broken creatures?" cried Katrina.
"My dear," said Mrs. Carroll, "when you've been with us a little while
you'll realize how close we are to primitive conditions. To-day you
break the horse you mean to ride next week. To-morrow you kill the
steer or the pig or the chickens that were your pets to-day."
"I suppose it must be so always in the country, but you can't be very
primitive here with a large town near by and a railroad."
"In reality we are only as far from the Asheville Court House as the
people on the upper boundary of the Bronx are from Castle Garden; but
in point of convenience, owing to the scarcity of trains and their poor
arrangement, we are almost as near to Washington."
"Still, the railroad has opened the country and given the farmers new
markets," asserted John.
"Undoubtedly; but that is not an unmixed good, in my opinion," said
Mrs. Carroll, stoutly. "They sell more cabbages and apples, but they
buy cheap fabrics and ready-made clothing in place of the stout
homespun that the women used to weave."
"You'd be surprised," said Patton, "to know how little the country
people use the railroad. There was an example of it day before
yesterday. A man from McDowell's Creek, about six miles from Flora,
took his first train-ride since the road was put through, fifteen years
ago."
"How extraordinary that seems! It was the day of his life, I suppose."
Katrina's eyes were large with amazement.
"In a way it was," said Bob, dryly, "for in Asheville he celebrated his
adventures not wisely, but too well, and on the way out he fell from
the platform and was killed."
"Bob, how can you be so flippant?" objected Sydney to the crestfallen
young man. "It seems a terrible end."
"All sudden deaths seem terrible to us who are left behind," said Mrs.
Carroll; "but even such an ending does not give us the shock that it
would if we did not live in a community accustomed to the accidents
consequent upon every man's carrying a revolver. It's a bad habit. I
hope you boys don't do it."
"No, indeed, Mrs. Carroll," they both replied, with suspicious
promptness, and they sat up very straight, so that the backs of their
coats presented an unbroken line.
John smiled at them.
"Are they often used?" he asked.
"Quite too often," answered Sydney, gravely. "As grandmother says, we
do, indeed, live close to nature. If a man is angry with his neighbor,
he calls him to his door on some moonless night and shoots him."
"In primitive society the primitive wants of man are satisfied in
primitive ways," remarked Bob.
"Moses ought to have put the Ten Commandments on something stronger
than stone if he meant them to be unbroken," added Patton.
Mrs. Carroll shook her head at him.
"I don't see how you can be so very primitive," insisted Katrina. "Now
this----" She glanced expressively about the room, where old portraits
surmounted the dark panelling and heavy rugs glowed warmly in the
firelight.
"Oh, we are as composite in our mountains as are the people of any
other part of these composite United States," said Sydney. "The
mountaineers themselves are a mixture. There are men in coves distant
from the railroad who are living on land to which their ancestors drove
up their cattle from the low country three or four generations ago.
These men are a law unto themselves. They have no opportunities for
educating their children, and once in a while you hear of a family that
never has heard the name of God."
"My great-grandfather came here in the early eighteen hundreds," said
Bob, "and a queer lot he must have found. They say that there was a
crop of younger sons of good English families which had been planted
here as a good country for the culture of wild oats."
"I suppose that in the eighteenth century this was as remote a place as
any to lose black sheep in, if losing was their desire," suggested
John.
"It's quite true, quite true, what Bob says," Mrs. Carroll took up the
explanation. "Mr. Carroll used to tell me that he knew it to be a fact
that Bud Yarebrough's father--Bud is a ne'er-do-weel who lives in a
cove not many miles from here, Katrina, my dear--was a great-grandson
of one of the Dukes of Calverley."
"Then Melissa's baby is the Lady Sydney Melissa Something-or-other!"
laughed Sydney.
"There's a legend of a penal colony, too," said Patton.
"That is disputed," replied Mrs. Carroll.
"If there was one, Pink Pressley is of its lineage, I am sure," said
Sydney.
"If heredity counts for anything, I should think that a colony of black
sheep whose diet had been wild oats would account for all the
lawlessness of the community," offered John.
"For a great deal of it, undoubtedly, and their life of freedom from
restraint for so many years would be responsible for more."
"But these people are not close about you here," exclaimed Katrina.
"Indeed, they are. They are our neighbors and our friends. Why, there's
a tenant on our place who has been tried twice for murder."
"Bob and I found a deserted still in the woods over the creek the other
day," said Sydney. "That suggests another of our friends' occupations."
"But your influence must be at work among them constantly."
"We hope it is, and that is why we lay stress upon the compositeness of
our settlement," said Mrs. Carroll. "There are the country people we've
been telling you about, and there's a group of what we call
Neighborhood people, for distinction's sake. The Delaunays at the Cliff
were originally from New Orleans, and the Hugers were from Charleston,
and we came from Virginia. Before the war we used to come over the
mountains every summer in carriages to take refuge from the heat of the
lowlands, and after the war we were glad to live here permanently."
"It was post-bellum poverty that drove us here from the
Scotch-Presbyterian settlements in the middle of the State," said
Patton. "We're another element."
"And is there really fusion going on as there is in other parts of the
country?" asked Katrina.
"My people have assimilated with the peasantry, as I suppose Mrs.
Carroll calls them, ever since they came," said Bob.
"This settlement must be unique," said John.
"No. I know of two not very far from here, and I've heard of others.
The more fortunate people consider themselves as closely allied to the
country as do the mountaineers. We are integral parts, and we insist on
being so considered."
"We aren't a wholly bad lot, we mountaineers," said Bob. "I speak as of
the soil, you see. Too much whisky and tobacco and hog-meat have
deprived us of physical beauty, and we are sadly lacking in moral
strength, but the life of freedom and lawlessness developed good
traits, too. We don't lie,--that is, about important things," he added,
hastily, putting his hand under his coat; "and we don't steal, and we
are loyal to our friends."
"Especially when the minions of the law are after them," grinned
Patton.
"Ah, you've betrayed yourselves," cried Sydney. "I know it was you two
boys who hid Pink Pressley when the revenue men were chasing him the
last time."
"The last time?" John asked the question.
"Oh, Pink used to be a chronic moonshiner. He seems to be a reformed
pirate now," said Patton. "He must be in love."
"Whisky is the curse of this country," said Mrs. Carroll, vehemently,
while Bob gazed into the fire and Sydney played with the sugar-tongs.
"You can't deny lying, Bob, when the moonshiners are lying to the
revenue men every day, and their friends are lying in their behalf; and
you can't say they don't steal, when they are defrauding the government
with every quart of blockade they sell. The mountaineers may be loyal
to their friends, but it is to conceal crime."
"Illicit stilling seems to be regarded like smuggling," said John. "The
government is fair game."
"Whisky stunts the growth of children, and blunts the morals of youth,
and makes murderers of men," went on the old lady, disregarding John's
interruption, and sitting with expressive straightness. A silence fell
upon the group that John and Katrina felt to be painful without
understanding why. Patton and Sydney were burning with sympathy for
Bob. It was Patton who broke the quiet.
"And they drink it from a dipper!"
The ensuing laughter snapped the strain of embarrassment.
"We have another class of people that we haven't described to Katrina,"
said Sidney. "The resident foreigners."
"Like Baron von Rittenheim," said Bob, absently, staring at the fire.
"Another title! How in the world did he come here?" asked Katrina.
"Oh, he's one of the footballs of Fate," said Patton.
"Usually they're English,--the footballs," said Bob. "They come here to
mend either health or fortune, stay a few years, and go away."
"Mended?"
"Yes, in health, if they--stop drinking." Bob brought it out with a
jerk. "This climate's great, you know."
"But not with improved finances?"
"Yes, that too. It's a fine place for economy."
"For what purpose did this German come?" asked Katrina.
"He's one of the mysteries," said Patton, rising to take his leave.
Bob called Sydney from the drawing-room into the hall, and handed her a
letter.
"Father got it this afternoon," he said. "It's awfully funny."
Sydney took it from its envelope. Bob, bending to buckle on his spurs,
did not see her flush at the signature and then grow pale as she read.
"Bob," she whispered, hoarsely, "promise me,--promise that you'll let
me know--if they do it--when it's going to be."
And Bob, who had no thought but to amuse her, said, heartily, "Why, of
course."
Had von Rittenheim, sitting before his fire awaiting Bud's return, been
able to see into the minds of his neighbors, he would have found matter
more productive of mental confusion than were English irregular verbs
to him.
That Dr. Morgan, after receiving a challenge, could settle back to the
perusal of the _Pickwick Papers_ as placidly as if he had attended to
the last minute detail of the conventions attendant upon that process
called "giving satisfaction," was a thing that his traditions, his
education, and his environment had put it out of his power to
understand.
That Bob could regard the incident as a joke was even farther from his
grasp. An indifference caused by a lack of fear,--that was within his
range. But that this method of wiping out an insult should be regarded
as funny,--of such an emotion under such circumstances he could not
conceive.
Sydney's feeling, could he have known it, was closer to his
comprehension, because it is not beyond man's imagination to guess,
approximately, the frame of mind into which a woman would be thrown
upon hearing of such a prospective meeting. What he could not see was
the importance that his own part played in the girl's fear.
The thing seemed to her barbaric, mediaeval, horrible. She shook to
think of harm that might come to her good old friend, the Doctor. She
became an abject coward when she remembered that the old man was noted
throughout the mountains as a perfect shot.