FAREWELL VISIT TO MONDREER
It was a long day’s ride, and it was dark when their train ran into the
little station where it stopped for half a minute.
The large party got out, and they found a much larger party collected to
meet them.
There was old Tom Grandiere—as the master of Oldfield was beginning to
be called—with an ox cart to carry his tribe of sons and daughters home.
There was William Elk, with an old barouche which he had brought to meet
his niece.
There was Miss Sibby Bayard in her mule cart, come to fetch Roland.
Lastly, there was Mrs. Anglesea, in the capacious break, driven by
Jacob, come to fetch the whole Force family home from the station to
Mondreer.
And there were such hearty, cordial greetings as are seldom heard in
this world.
“Welcome home, neighbors!”
“We have missed you!”
“Thank Heaven you have come back!”
And so on and so on! All speaking at once, so that it was difficult to
tell who said what, or to reply distinctly to anything.
Yet the Forces all responded in the most cordial manner to these
effusive greetings, in which Mrs. Force and Odalite detected an
undertone of sadness and sympathy which both mother and daughter
understood too well.
“They have heard of our new humiliation, although we have never written
of it! Yes, they have all heard of it, though no one alludes to it,” was
the unuttered thought of mother and daughter.
“Lord’s sake, ole man, hoist them children up here and get in! Don’t
stand palavering with them people all night! I’m gwine to drive you all
home myself. I only brought him for show! I wouldn’t trust him to take
us home safe over bad roads in the dark,” said Mrs. Anglesea, from her
seat on the box beside the coachman.
“Well, my girls and boys, have you been so spoiled by your gay city life
that you will never be content with your dull, country home again?”
demanded Thomas Grandiere, as he helped his big daughters to tumble up
into the ox cart.
“Oh, dad, it was perfectly delightful! But we are glad to get home and
see you, for all that!” answered Sophie.
“‘There’s no place like home,’”
sentimentally sighed Peggy. And all the other sisters and the brothers
chimed in with her.
“Washington is well enough, but they are all too indifferent about the
crops ever to amount to much, I think,” said Sam Grandiere, and his
brother Ned seconded the motion. And so that party waved a last adieu to
the Forces and drove off.
“Your mother and your aunt are both at our house, Rosemary, and so I
came to fetch you over there,” said William Elk, as he helped his little
mite of a niece into the old barouche. “You don’t grow a bit, child! Are
you never going to be a woman?” he further inquired, as he settled her
into her seat.
“Nature puts her finest essences into her tiniest receptacles, Uncle
Elk!” said Roland, who called everybody else’s uncle his own.
But William Elk had driven off without receiving the benefit of the
young man’s words.
“Roland, come here and get into this cart afore this here brute goes to
sleep and drops down. There’s a time for all things, sez I, and the time
to stand staring after a young gal, sez I, isn’t nine o’clock at night
when there’s an ole ’oman and wicious mule on a cart waitin’ for you,
and a mighty dark night and a rough road afore you, sez I!” called Miss
Sibby, from her seat.
“All right, aunty, I’m coming.”
And the young fellow jumped into the cart, took the reins from the old
lady, and started the mule at a speed that made the animal cock his ears
and meditate rebellion.
By this time Mr. and Mrs. Force, their three daughters and Leonidas were
seated in the break.
Mrs. Anglesea was on the box, driving. This she so insisted on doing
that there was no preventing her except by enacting a scene.
“Jake’s getting old, and blind, and stupid. I’m not going to trust my
precious neck to him, you bet! I have lost a good deal, but I want to
keep my head on my shoulders,” she had said, as she took the reins from
Jake, who immediately folded his arms, closed his eyes and resigned
himself to sleep.
“You had better let me drive if you are afraid to trust Jake, Mrs.
Anglesea,” suggested Mr. Force.
“You!” said the lady from Wild Cats’, in a tone of ineffable contempt.
“Not much! I’d a heap rather trust Jake than you! Why, ole man, you
never were a good whip since I knowed you, and you’ve been out of
practice three years! Sit still and make yourself comfortable, and I’ll
land you safe at Mondreer. Old Luce will have a comfortable tea there
for you, and strawberry shortcake, too. Think of strawberries on the
twelfth of April! But I raised ’em under glass. And so my beat wasn’t
dead, after all! And I in mourning for him ever since the fourteenth of
February! Well, my beat beats all! I shall never believe him dead until
I see him strung up by a hangman and cut up by the doctors—of which I
live in hopes! No, you needn’t worry. Jake’s fast asleep, and he
wouldn’t hear thunder, nor even the dinner horn, much less my talk!”
“How did you hear that Col. Anglesea had turned up again?” inquired Mr.
Force.
“Why, Lord! ole man, it’s all over the whole country. You couldn’t cork
up and seal down news like that! It would bu’st the bottle! I believe
some one fetched it down from Washington to the Calvert House, and then
it got all over the country; and Lord love you, Jake heard it at the
post office and fetched it home to the house. And then—when Beever got
your letter, and not a word was said about the wedding, and Miss
Grandiere got two—one from you and one from Rosemary—and nothing said
neither about no brides nor grooms, we felt to see how it was. And now
there’s lynching parties sworn in all over the neighborhood to put an
end to that beat if ever he dares to show his face here again. Oh! the
whole neighborhood is up in arms, I tell you!”
“I am very sorry my good neighbors’ sympathy demonstrates itself in that
way,” said Mr. Force.
“You can’t help it, though!” triumphantly exclaimed the lady from the
diggings, as she gave the off horse a sharp cut that started the whole
team in a gallop, and jerked all the party out of their seats and into
them again.
“As a magistrate, it is my bounden duty to help it,” returned Mr. Force,
as soon as he recovered from the jolt.
“Look here, ole man! You take a fool’s advice and lay low and say
nothing when lynch law is going round seeking whom it may devour! For
when it has feasted on one wictim it licks its chops and looks round for
another, and wouldn’t mind gobbling up a magistrate or two any more than
you would so many oysters! Leastways that is how it was at Wild Cats’.
And I tell you, our boys out there woudn’t have let a beat like him
cumber the face of the earth twenty-four hours after his first
performance, if they could have got hold of him. It’s a word and a blow
with them, and the blow comes first! Now, for goodness’ sake, do stop
talking, ole man! I can’t listen to you and drive down this steep hill
at the same time without danger of upsetting! Whoa, Jessie! What y’re
’bout, Jack? Stea—dee!”
And the lady on the box gave her whole attention to taking her team
safely down Chincapin Hill and across the bridge over Chincapin Creek.
“Oh! how glad I am to see the dear old woods and the creek and the
bridge once more!” said little Elva, fervently.
“‘See!’ Why, you can’t see a mite of it! It is as dark here as the
bottom of a shaft at midnight. No moon. And what light the stars might
give hid by the meeting of the trees overhead. ‘See,’ indeed! There’s
imagination for you!” replied Mrs. Anglesea.
“Well, anyhow I know we are on the dear old bridge, and going over the
creek, because I can hear the sound of the wheels on the planks and the
gurgle of the water running through the rocks and stones,” deprecatingly
replied Elva.
“Why don’t you say ecstatically—
“‘Hail! blest scenes of my childhood!’
That’s the way to go on if you mean to do it up brown!” chaffed
Wynnette.
“Oh, how can you be such a mocker! Are you not glad to get home?”
pleaded Elva.
“Rather; but I’m not in raptures over it.”
“Look here, young uns! Stop talking; you distract me. I can’t listen and
drive at the same time. And if you will keep on jawing you’ll get upset.
These roads are awful bad washed by the spring rains, and if we get home
safe it will be all owing to my good driving! Only you mustn’t distract
me by jawing!” said Mrs. Anglesea. And having silenced every tongue but
her own, she drove on slowly by the light of the carriage lanterns,
which only shed a little stream directly in front of her, talking all
the time about the negligence of the supervisors and the carelessness of
the farmers in suffering the roads to be in such a condition at that
time of the year.
“This could never a been the case if you’d been home, ole man! You’d a
been after them supervisors with a sharp stick, you would! But, Lord!
the don’t-care-ishness of the men about here!” she concluded, as she
drew up at the first broad gate across the road leading into the
Mondreer grounds.
Her passengers thought, but did not say, that if the lady on the box
could not listen and drive at the same time, she could certainly drive
and talk pretty continuously at the same time.
“Here, you lazy nigger, Jake! Wake up and jump down and open this here
gate!” exclaimed Mrs. Anglesea, giving the old sleeper such a sharp grip
and hard shake that he yelled before he woke and said he dreamed a limb
of a tree had caught him and knocked him out of his seat.
However, he soon came to a sense of the situation, half climbed and half
tumbled down to the ground and opened the gate to let the break pass
through.
The house was now in sight and lighted up from garret to basement.
“Oh, how pretty!” cried Elva.
And Wynnette mocked her good-humoredly.
“I told Luce to do it and leave all the window shutters open so you
could see through. Lord! tallow candles are cheap enough, ’specially
when you make ’em yourself. And there was an awful lot of beef tallow
last killing to render down. I couldn’t tell you how many candles I
run—about five hundred, I reckon! Well, here we are at the house,
and——Oh, Lord! Jake, jump down and hold that dog, or he’ll break his
chain and jump through the carriage windows!” cried Mrs. Anglesea, as
they stopped before the house.
Indeed, Joshua was making “the welkin ring” with his joyous barks and
his frantic efforts to get at the returning friends, whose presence he
had scented.
“Let him loose this instant, Jake! Unchain him, I say!” exclaimed
Wynnette. And without waiting for her orders to be obeyed, she sprang
from the carriage, fell upon the dog’s neck, and covered him with
caresses.
“Oh, you dear, good, true, trusty old fellow! To know us all again after
so many years! To be so glad to see us! And to forgive us at once for
going away and leaving you behind. You would never have left us, would
you, my dog? Ah! dogs are a great deal more faithful than human beings.”
While Wynnette with her own hands unloosed the chain, the other members
of the family alighted from the break.
And Joshua, released from restraint, dashed into the midst of the group,
barking in frantic raptures, and darting from one to another trying to
turn himself into a half a dozen dogs to worship at once a half a dozen
false gods in the form of his returning friends.
They all responded to Joshua’s demonstrations, and then entered the
house, closely followed by the dog, who did not mean to lose sight of
them again.
In the lighted hall they found all the family servants gathered to
welcome them home.
“Oh, dear mist’ess, we-dem all frought as you-dem had forsook us forever
and ever, amen!” said Luce, bursting into tears, as she took and kissed
the hand her mistress offered.