General Basil Prince sat in his law office one murky December morning of
the year 1903. It was an office which bespoke the attorney of the older
generation, and about it hung the air of an unadorned workship. If one
compared it with the room in the same building where young Morgan
Wallifarro worked at a flat-topped mahogany table, one found the
difference between Spartan simplicity and sybarite elegance. But over
one book case hung an ancient and battered cavalry sword, a relic of the
days when the General had ridden with the "wizards of the saddle and the
sabre."
Just now he was, for the second time, reading a letter which seemed to
hold for him a peculiar interest.
* * * * *
"Dear General," it ran:
"Your invitation to come to Louisville and meet at your table that
coterie of intimates of whom you have so often spoken is one that tempts
me strongly--and yet I must decline.
"You know that my name is not McCalloway--and you do not know what it
is. I think I made myself clear on that subject when you waived the
circumstance that I am a person living in hermitage, because my life has
not escaped clouding. You generously accepted my unsupported statement
that no actual guilt tarnishes the name which I no longer use--yet
despite my eagerness to know those friends of yours, those gentlemen who
appeal so strongly to my imagination and admiration, I could not, in
justice to you or to myself, permit you to foist me on them under an
assumed name. I have resolved upon retirement and must stand to my
resolution. The discovery of my actual identity would be painful to me
and social life might endanger that.
"I'll not deny that in the loneliness here, particularly when the boy is
absent, there are times when, for the dinner conversation of gentlemen
and ladies, I would almost pawn my hope of salvation. There are other
times, and many, when for the feel of a sabre hilt in my hand, for the
command of a brigade, or even a regiment, I would almost offer my blade
for hire--almost but not quite.
"I must, however, content myself with my experiment; my wolf-cub.
"You write of my kindness to him, but my dear General, it is the other
way about. It is he who has made my hermitage endurable, and filled in
the empty spaces of my life. My fantastic idea of making him the
American who starts the pioneer and ends the modern, begins to assume
the colour of plausibility.
"I now look forward with something like dread to the time when he must
go out into a wider world. For then I cannot follow him. I shall have
reached the end of my tutorship. I do not think I can then endure this
place without him--but there are others as secluded.
"But my dear General, the very cordial tone of your letters emboldens me
to ask a favour (and it is a large one), in this connection. When he has
finished his course at college I should like to have him read law in
Louisville. That will take him into a new phase of the development I
have planned. He will need strong counsel and true friends there, for he
will still be the pioneer with the rough bark on him, coming into a land
of culture, and, though he will never confess it, he will feel the sting
of class distinctions and financial contrasts.
"There he will see what rapid transitions have left of the old South,
and despite the many changes, there still survives much of its spirit.
Its fragrant bouquet, its fine traditions, are not yet gone. God
willing, I hope he will even go further than that, and later know the
national phases as well as the sectional--but that, of course, lies on
the knees of the gods."
* * * * *
General Prince laid down the letter and sat gazing thoughtfully at the
scabbarded sabre on the wall. Then he rose from his chair and went
along the corridors to a suite legended, "Wallifarro, Banks and
Wallifarro." The General paused to smile, for the last name had been
freshly lettered there, and he knew that it meant a hope fulfilled to
his old friend the Colonel. His son's name was on the door, and his son
was in the firm. But it was to the private office of Colonel Tom that he
went, and the Colonel shoved back a volume of decisions to smile his
welcome.
"Tom," began the General, "I have a letter here that I want you to read.
I may be violating a confidence--but I think the writer would trust my
judgment in such a matter."
Tom Wallifarro read the sheets of evenly penned chirography, and as he
handed them back he said musingly:
"Under the circumstances, of course, it would not be fair to ask if you
have any guess as to who McCalloway is--or was. He struck me as a
gentleman of extraordinary interest--He is a man who has known
distinction."
"That's why I came in this morning, Tom. I want you to know him
better--and to co-operate with me, if you will, about the boy. Since the
mountain can't come to Mahomet--"
"We are to go there?" came the understanding response, and Basil Prince
nodded.
"Precisely. I wanted you and one or two others of our friends to go down
there. I had in mind an idea that may be foolish--fantastic, even, for a
lot of old fellows like ourselves--but none the less interesting. I want
to give the chap a dinner in his own house."
Colonel Wallifarro smiled delightedly as he gave his ready sanction to
the plan. "Count me in, General, and call on me whenever you need me."
It was not until January that the surprise party came to pass, and Basil
Prince and Tom Wallifarro had entered into their arrangements with all
the zest of college boys sharing a secret. Out of an idea of simple
beginnings grew elaborations as the matter developed, until there was
indeed a dash of the fantastic in the whole matter, and a touch, too, of
pathos. Because of McCalloway's admission that at times his hunger for
the refinements of life became a positive nostalgia, the plotters
resolved to stage, for that one evening, within the walls of hewn logs,
an environment full of paradox.
Results followed fast. A hamper was filled from the cellars of the
Pendennis Club. Old hams appeared, cured by private recipes that had
become traditions. Napery and silver--even glass--came out of sideboards
to be packed for a strange journey. All these things were consigned long
in advance to Larry Masters at Marlin Town, where railway traffic ended
and "jolt wagon" transportation began. Aunt Judy Fugate, celebrated in
her day and generation as a cook, became an accessory before the fact.
In her house only a "whoop and a holler" distant from that of
McCalloway's, she received, with a bursting importance and a vast
secrecy, a store of supplies smuggled hither far more cautiously than it
had ever been needful to smuggle "blockade licker."
Upon one pivotal point hinged the success of the entire conspiracy.
Larry Masters must persuade McCalloway to visit him for a full day
before the date set, and must go back with him at the proper time. The
transformation of a log house into a banquet hall demands time and
non-interference. But there was no default in Masters's co-operation,
and on the appointed evening McCalloway and Larry rode up to the door of
the house and dismounted. Then the soldier halted by his fence-line and
spoke in a puzzled tone:
"Strange--very strange--that there should be lights burning inside. I've
been away forty-eight hours and more. I dare say Aunt Judy has happened
in. She has a key to the place."
Larry Masters hazarded no explanatory suggestion. The vacuous
expression upon his countenance was, perhaps, a shade overdone, but he
followed his host across the small yard to his door.
On the threshold McCalloway halted again in a paralysed bewilderment.
Perhaps he doubted his own sanity for a moment, because of what he saw
within.
The centre of the room was filled with a table, not rough, as was his
own, but snowy with damask, and asparkle with glass and silver, under
the softened light of many candles. So the householder stood bewildered,
pressing a hand against his forehead, and as he did so several gentlemen
rose from chairs before his own blazing hearth. When they turned to
greet him, he noticed, with bewilderment, that they were all in evening
dress.
Basil Prince came smilingly around the table with an outstretched hand,
and an enlightening voice. "Since I am the original conspirator, sir, I
think I ought to explain. We are a few Mahomets who have come to the
mountain. Our designs upon you embrace nothing more hostile than a
dinner party."
For a moment Victor McCalloway, for years now a recluse with itching
memories of a life that had been athrob with action and vivid with
colour, stood seeking to command his voice. His throat worked
spasmodically, and into the eyes that had on occasion been flint-hard
with sternness came a mist that he could not deny. He sought to welcome
them--and failed. Rarely had he been so profoundly touched, and all he
succeeded in putting into words, and that in an unnatural voice, was:
"Gentlemen--you must pardon me--if I fail to receive you properly--I
have no evening clothes."
But their laughter broke the tension, and while he shook hands around,
thinking what difficulties must of necessity have been met in this
gracious display of cordiality, Moses, the negro butler from the
Wallifarro household, appeared from the kitchen door, bearing a tray of
cocktails.
It was not until after two keenly effervescent hours of talk, laughter
and dining, when the cigars had been lighted, that Prince came to his
feet.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I am not going to pledge the man who is both our
host and guest of honour, because I prefer to propose a sentiment we can
all drink, standing, including himself--I give you the success of his
gallant experiment--the Boy--Boone Wellver--'A toast to the
native-born!'"
They rose amid the sound of chairs scraping back, and once more
McCalloway felt the contraction of his throat and the dimness in his
eyes.
"Gentlemen," he stammered, "I am grateful.... I think the boy is going
to be an American--not only a hillsman--not even only a Kentuckian or a
Southerner--though God knows either would be a proud enough title--but
an American who blends and fuses these fine elements. That, at all
events, is my hope and effort."
He sat down hurriedly--and yet in other days he had spoken with polished
ease at tables where distinguished men and women were his fellow
diners--and it was then that Tom Wallifarro rose.
"This was not to be a formal affair of set speeches," he announced in a
conversational tone, "but there is one more sentiment without which we
would rise leaving the essential thing unsaid. Some one has called these
mountain folk our 'contemporary ancestors'--men of the past living in
our day. This lad is, in that sense, of an older age. When he goes into
the world, he will need such advisors of the newer age as he has had
here in Mr. McCalloway--or at least pale imitations of Mr. McCalloway,
whose place no one can fill. We are here this evening for two pleasant
purposes. To dine with our friend, who could not come to us, and to
found an informal order. The Boone who actually lived two centuries ago
was the godfather of Kentucky.
"Gentlemen, I give you the order of our own founding tonight: The
Godfathers of Boone."
It was of course by coincidence, only, that the climax of that evening's
gathering should have been capped as it was. Probability would have
brought the last guests, whom no one there had expected, at any other
time, but perhaps the threads of destiny do not after all run haphazard.
Possibly it could only be into such a fantastic pattern that they could
ever have been woven.
At all events it was that night they came: the two short men, with
narrow eyes, set in swarthy Oriental faces--such as those hills had not
before seen.
There was a shout from the night; the customary mountain voice raised
from afar as the guide who had brought these visitors halloed from the
roadway: "I'm Omer Maggard ... an' I'm guidin' a couple of outlanders,
thet wants ter see ye."
McCalloway went to the door and opened it, and because it was late the
guide turned back without crossing the threshold.
But the two men who had employed his services to conduct them through
the night and along the thicketed roads entered gravely, and though they
too must have felt the irrational contrasts of the picture there, their
inscrutable almond eyes manifested no surprise.
They were Japanese, and, as both bowed from the hips, one inquired in
unimpeachable English, "You are the Honourable Victor McCalloway?"
If the former soldier had found it impossible to keep the mists of
emotion out of his pupils a little while ago, such was no longer the
case. His glance was now as stern in its inquisitorial questioning as
steel. It was not necessary that these gentlemen should state their
mission, to inform him that their coming carried a threat for his
incognito, but he answered evenly:
"I am so called."
"I have the honour to present the Count Oku ... and myself Itokai."