Boone Wellver walked into the office of the police chief one spring
morning when the trees along the streets were youthfully green.
Somewhere outside a band, parading with transparencies, was summoning
all horse-lovers and devotees of chance to the track and paddocks of
Churchill Downs.
Inside the office of the chief sat Morgan Wallifarro, point-device as
ever, and over his desk the chief bent, listening with an attitude of
deference to what he said. It was a new department head who occupied
that swivel chair. New officials occupied every office under that
clock-towered roof, and behind each placarded door the suggestions of
Morgan Wallifarro held some degree of authoritative force and sanction.
For almost two years the courts had laboured to the grind of the contest
cases. Again, shoulder to shoulder with the Nestors of the bar and their
younger assistants, Boone had played his minor but far from trivial
part. Almost a year before he had listened in the joint sessions room as
the decisive utterances of the two chancellors fell upon a taut and
expectant stillness. Those arbiters had read long and learned
disquisitions as befitted the final chapter to months of hearings. That
day had been a Waterloo for attempted Reform. With dignity of manner and
legalistic verbiage Boone had heard it adjudged that behind the physical
results of the elections the interference of the courts might not
penetrate, and he had turned away disheartened but not surprised.
Then had come a new beginning; the final issue in the Court of Appeals,
and finally out of that ultimate mill had been ground a reversal and a
decision that upon a government seated by such devious and fraudulent
methods the cloak of responsibility rested "like the mantle of a giant
upon the withered shoulders of a pigmy."
Now as Boone shook hands with the new chief, a patrolman entered the
place and stood silently on the threshold. In his eyes was the sullen
but unaggressive resentment of the whipped bully. This was the officer
who had brandished a club over Morgan Wallifarro's head and who had
dragged Boone out of the registration booth under arrest. Gone now was
his domineering truculence, gone all but the smouldering of his old,
self-confident ferocity. Morgan glanced up without comment, and the
chief recognized the new arrival with a curt nod.
"Keefe," he said shortly, "you were under grave charges and failed to
appear before the Board of Safety at the designated time."
The uniformed man glowered around the room. One vestige of satisfaction
remained to him; that of a truculent exit and of it he meant to avail
himself.
"What the hell was the use, Chief. I knew they'd railroad me. I quit
right now."
"It's too late. You can't quit!" The words were sharp and incisive, and
under the chief's forefinger an electric buzzer rasped. As an orderly
appeared, his direction was snapped out: "Call in the lieutenants and
captains from the officers' room."
Keefe took a step forward as if in protest, then realizing his
helplessness, he halted and stood on braced legs, breathing heavily.
He foresaw what was coming, yet there was no escape, for the hour had
struck. He listened stolidly to the ticking clock until several officers
in shoulder straps trooped in and lined up, also waiting, then his
superior's voice again sounded:
"Keefe, your club!"
The officer laid it on the desk.
"Your revolver." The weapon followed the night-stick. Then the chief
rose from his seat.
"You have failed to meet the charges preferred against you. You have
used the city's uniform as a protection for law-breaking and violence.
Now in the presence of these officers I publicly break you." He ripped
the shield from the patrolman's breast and the disgraced man stood a
moment unsteadily--almost rocking on his feet as his lips stirred
without articulate sound. Then he turned away. His lowering eyes fell
upon Morgan Wallifarro, who sat without a word or a change of expression
in his chair against the wainscoted wall. For an instant the patrolman
seemed on the point of bursting into a valedictory of abuse--even of
attack--but he thought better of it, and as he went out there was a
shamble in the step that had swaggered.
* * * * *
Colonel Wallifarro's country place had been opened for the summer, and a
series of house parties were to follow in Anne's honour, but as yet the
season was young and, except for Boone, Victor McCalloway was the
family's only guest.
One evening near to sunset the soldier was sitting alone with Anne under
the spread of tall pines that swayed and whispered in the light breeze.
Before them, graciously undulating to the white turnpike a quarter of a
mile distant, went the woodland pasture where the bluegrass lay dappled
with the shadows of oak and walnut. It was a land of richness and
tranquil charm: the first reward of the pioneers in their great
nation-building adventure beyond the unknown ranges. McCalloway's eyes
were full of appreciation. They dwelt lingeringly on blooded mares
nibbling at rich pasturage, with royally sired foals nuzzling at their
sleek flanks. Filling in the distance of a picture that seemed to sing
under a singing sky, were acres of wheat waving greenly and of the young
hemp's plumed billowing: of woodland stretches free of rock or
underbrush. In the branches of the pines a red cardinal flitted, and
from a maple flashed the orange and black gorgeousness of a Baltimore
oriole. Then the man's eyes came back to the girl.
The figure in its simple summer dress was gracefully lissome. The
features, chiseled to a pattern of high-bred delicacy, were yet instinct
with strength. As Boone was the exponent of the hills of hardship, which
had been the barriers the pioneers had to conquer, so, he thought, was
she the flower of that nurture that had bloomed in the places of their
victory.
Just now the violet eyes were brimming with grave thoughtfulness, like
the shadow of a cloud upon living colour. When McCalloway looked at
those eyes he recalled the water in the Blue Grotto, whose scrap of
vividness transcends all the other high-keyed colour of Naples
Bay--Naples Bay, which is itself a saturnalia of colour!
Without doubt his protege had set his heart on a patrician--but at the
moment there was more wistfulness than joyousness in her face, causing
the subtle curvature of her lips to droop where so often a smile flashed
its brightness.
"Anne," he slowly asked, "would it be impertinence for an old fellow to
question that look of dream--almost of anxiety--that seems an alien
expression on your face?"
The preoccupation vanished, and she turned her smile upon him.
"Was I looking as dismal as all that?" she demanded. "I guess it was the
unaccustomed strain of thinking."
"You remind me," he went on thoughtfully, "of a woman I once
thought--and I have never changed my mind--the most charming in Europe.
Of course that means no more nor less than that I loved her."
Anne flushed at the compliment and, quickly searching the gray eyes for
a quizzical twinkle, found them entirely grave.
"How do I remind you of her, Mr. McCalloway?" The question was put
gently.
"I've been asking myself that question, and an exact answer eludes me."
He paused a moment, then went soberly on: "Your hair is a disputed
frontier, where brown and gold contend for dominion, and hers is
midnight black. Your eyes are violet and hers are dark, flecked, in
certain lights, with amber. Your colour is that of an old-fashioned rose
garden--and hers that of a poppy field."
"It must be only by contrast, then, that I make you think of her," mused
the girl. "We are absolute opposites."
"In detail, yes; in essentials, no," protested the man who was old
enough to compliment boldly and directly. "You share the quality of
goodness, but in itself that's as requisite to character and as
externally uninteresting as bones in a body. You share a rarer gift,
too. It's not so essential, but it crowns and enthrones its possessor
and is life's rarest gift: pure charm. Relative charm we find now and
again, but sheer, unalloyed charm is a flower that blooms only under the
blue moon of magic."
The pinkness of Anne's cheeks grew deeper.
"Where is she now, sir?"
"For many years she has been where magic is the common law: in
Paradise."
"Oh, forgive me. You spoke of her--"
"In the present tense," interrupted the soldier. "Yes, I always do. It
is so that I think of her." He broke off, then went on in a changed
voice, "But the gravity in eyes that laugh by divine right calls for
explanation."
For an instant a tiny line of trouble showed between her brows, and the
seriousness returned.
"I think perhaps, Mr. McCalloway, you are the one person I can tell."
She paused as though trying to marshal the sequences of a difficult
subject, then spoke impulsively:
"Boone doesn't realize it," she said slowly. "I don't want him to know,
because there's nothing he can do about it--yet. Since I made my
debut--and that was almost three years ago--I've been under a pressure
that's never relaxed. It hasn't been the sort of coercion one can
openly fight, but the harder, more insidious thing. It's in mother's
eyes--in everything--the unspoken accusation that I'm an ingrate: that
I'm selfishly thinking only of myself and not at all of my family."
"You mean in not marrying Morgan?"
The girl nodded. "And in refusing to give Boone up. When he was in
Louisville all the time, it was easier. I had his courage to lean
on--but since he went back to plan his race for the legislature, I've
felt very much alone and outnumbered. They are all so gently immovable.
It's terrible to feel that your family are your enemies."
"And your heart refuses the thought of surrender?"
Anne looked at him quickly, and for her eyes he could no longer employ
the Blue Grotto as a simile. The waters there are shallow, and in that
moment of soul-unmasking he looked through her irises into deeps of
feeling, sincere and unalterable, and far down under fathoms of slighter
things into the basic pools of passion.
"You can hardly call it refusal," she said in a low voice, shaded with a
ghost-touch of indignation. "I have never considered it."
"So I had hoped," he responded gravely, "but I owe you the frankness of
admitting that I wasn't sure. On such subjects the boy has naturally
been reticent. I could be sure only of how _he_ felt. I wanted to see
him get on, and I knew what your influence would mean to him. It has
been what sunlight is to a place where the shadows lie too thick. In the
mountains, my dear, cows that browse where the sun doesn't penetrate get
'dew poisoning.' Human beings get it from the milk. To both it is often
fatal. There's dew poisoning in Boone's blood, too, from generations of
brooding shadows. He needed you."
He paused, and she bent forward. "Yes," she prompted softly.
"So I was glad for every moment he had with you--glad enough, even, to
endure the thought of what it might ultimately cost him in the usury of
heartache."
"And you were willing to let him undergo the heartache?" Her voice
perceptibly hardened. "I'm afraid that's a loyalty I can't understand."
"It's the loyalty of a soldier's faith in him," he responded briefly. "I
believed that if he must go through the fire he would come out of it not
slag, but good metal."
"If his heart has to ache,"--the girl's eyes were tender again--"it
won't be because I fail him."
"And, for the present, it is you who are paying the assessments of
heartache?"
"I guess it's not quite that bad,"--but her smile was forced. "I'm
merely being gloomed on by melancholy in the family circle as a
life-hope going to wreck. By a nod of my head--an acquiescent one to
Morgan--I could set the broken family fortunes up again beyond danger
and make everybody happy--except myself and Boone. They can't see
anything but sheer perversity in my refusal. They see me, as they think,
drifting on a sea of poverty and spinsterhood when the port lies open;
they see me as a bridesmaid to my friends getting married--even as a
godmother to their children--and they shake gloomy heads because the
water is all running by the mill!"
"And you are--how old?"--McCalloway's eyes were twinkling with the
question, "--in your hopeless celibacy?"
"Twenty-one," came the exact answer. "But it's not just that. Boone
still has his way to make. This fall the legislature--two years hence a
race for Congress. It's all a very long road."
The soldier nodded his head in understanding. "Yes, it's the waiting
game that strains the staunchest morale," he admitted. "And you realize
that it won't grow easier. But what of Morgan himself?"
"I guess if there were no Boone," she made candid admission, "Morgan
would have won. He has force and power--and I am a worshipper of those
things in a man. I thought at first he was a prig, but he's developed.
It may be generosity or it may be calculation, but he will neither
consent to give me up--nor try to hurry me. He plays the game hard, but
he plays it fair."
McCalloway rekindled the pipe that had died, and his next words followed
a meditative cloud of smoke from his lips. "It's not hard to understand
any man's loving you. I happen to know that more than a few have. Yet if
any one might escape, I'd pick Morgan. For him social values and
externals are ruling passions. For you they are incidental only."
Anne nodded, but her answer went arrow-straight to the core of the
truth. "Morgan fancies me because he thinks I'm popular and well-born.
It would make no difference to Boone if I were friendless."
Her confidant laughed. "Here comes Boone himself," he said, rising. "Of
late he's been building his political fences and hasn't seen enough of
you. I am going to leave you, but at any time that the counsel of an old
fellow can help you, call on me, my dear. I'm always at your
command--yours and his."
As he turned his steps toward the house, McCalloway saw the Colonel
rouse himself from his afternoon nap in his verandah chair. That
morning's _Courier-Journal_ slipped down from the forehead it had been
screening against the sun, and the Colonel became aware of a presence at
his side. Moses, his butler, stood there with juleps on a tray.
As McCalloway arrived on the verandah and took his glass from the negro,
his host rose with a yawning and apologetic smile. "If you'll pardon me,
sir," he said, "I'll leave you long enough to dip my sleepy face into a
basin of cold water." But when the master had gone the servant lingered
until, with an inquisitive impulse, McCalloway put a question.
"Moses, what is your other name? I've never heard it, have I?"
The darkey smiled. "I reckon not, sir. 'Most everybody calls me Colonel
Wallifarro's Mose."
The guest reflectively sipped his julep. Moses had always interested him
by virtue of his decorous address, which escaped the usual negro
pomposity as entirely as his speech escaped the negro dialect. Moses was
endowed, not with manners but with a manner--to himself, McCalloway had
almost said "the grand manner." It was as if his life, close to fine and
sincere things, had made him, despite his blackness of skin, also a
gentleman.
"But you have a surname, I dare say."
"Yes, sir. Wallver."
"The same as the Colonel's?"
The butler smiled with an infectious good humour and bowed his head.
"Yes, sir. In slave times we servants took our names from our masters. I
reckon my parents did like the rest. But the coloured people spell it
the shortest way."
"I see. And you have always been in his service?"
"Whenever he kept house, sir. When Mrs. Wallifarro died and Mr. Morgan
was at boarding school, the Colonel lived at the Club. I was assistant
steward there during that time, sir."
"Ah, that accounts for a number of things," hazarded the guest with a
smile. "For your _ex cathedra_ knowledge of serving wines, for example."
"No, sir, I hardly think so." There was a respectful trace of negation
and hauteur in the disclaimer. "I learned in the Colonel's house. That
was why they wanted me at the Club."
"Of course; I beg your pardon."
When the coloured man had withdrawn, the smile lingered on the weathered
face of the soldier, drawing pleasing little wrinkles about his eyes.
Here indeed was that traditional and charming flavour of ingredients
which the South has given to the diverse table of the nation.
Colonel Wallifarro was a gentleman in whom the definition of aristocracy
found justification; the negro, a survivor of that form of slavery in
which the master held his chattel, was a human soul in trust--they were
Wallifarros white and black!
Then McCalloway's eyes fell on Boone as he greeted Anne, and a new
thought flashed into his mind.
"Wallifarro--Wallver--Wellver," he exclaimed to himself under his
breath. "Boone said his old grandfather spoke of his people being lords
and ladies once!"
His mind, tempted into a speculative train of ideas, began weaving a
pattern of genealogical surmise--a pattern involving not only the
blood-lines of a single family, but also the warp and woof of national
beginnings. In his imagination he completed the trinity. The Colonel and
his servant were exponents of the Old South and its gracious oligarchy.
Boone sprang from the hills that bred a race which some one had called
"The Roundheads of the South." Yet at the start Boone's blood and that
of the Colonel's had perhaps been one blood: the sap of a single and
identical tap-root. Two brothers, setting out together in that hegira of
empire seekers that turned their faces west, had perhaps been separated
by the chances of the wilderness trail. One had won through, and his
sons and daughters had dwelt in ease. One had fallen by the hard road,
and the mould of decay had taken him root and branch. The name of the
stranded one had lapsed into its phonetic equivalent--as had the
negro's--and yet--
"No matter. He does not seem to have guessed it," murmured McCalloway.
"Perhaps after all it's as well so. He'll make the name as he wears it
one that men will come to know."