He could have sworn that he had slept but a moment when a terrific
squeaking and squealing, yelping and growling, under his windows, aroused
him with sufficient abruptness.
His first idea was that the “’coons and things” were “killin’ each other
clean out,” after the fashion of Miss Virginia’s supposition in regard to
the Scriptural beasts in the story of the ark.
Looking out, however, he saw that a large black and white hog was being
chased, nipped, barked at, and otherwise maltreated by the mastiff and
the collie. The frightened beast rushed hither and thither, squealing
and grunting, and the two dogs followed, falling over each other in the
eagerness of pursuit. After a while the mad trio disappeared to the
farther end of the long terrace.
Dawn had just broken. The east was one deep even tone of mellow gold,
translucent, palpitating. Over against it lay gray streamers as of a
tattered banner. The morning-star seemed to spin with a cold blue glitter
as of ice in the voluptuous saffron of its setting. A band of trees
stood out against the vivid east, with bold relief of indigo leaves and
branches, like a gigantic tracery of unknown hieroglyphics. Over field
and lawn a white steam rose and melted slowly--blue hill and tawny meadow
appearing and disappearing as the pearly masses rolled together or
dissolved.
Roden heard with supreme delight the confidential voice of a little
nigger announcing through the key-hole (their favorite channel of
communication) that his “trunks dun come.”
He got with all speed through his ablutions, and, when his boxes were
brought, into a well-worn shooting-coat and knickerbockers, determining
as he laced his hob-nailed boots to “do” the farm thoroughly that
morning, and devote the rest of the day to mountain-climbing and
explorations generally.
As he went out on the square portico at the front of the house he met
Miss Herrick, again in her boy’s dress, leading the mastiff and the
collie with either hand. She had evidently been to the rescue of the
black and white hog, and both dogs had a sneaky appearance, as though
they knew a flogging was in store for them.
“Mornin’,” she said to Roden, with her grave directness of regard. “How’d
you sleep?”
Before he could reply, a voice, rising in long, wailing tones upon the
chill air, interrupted them.
“O-o-o-o Po!” it called; “O-o-o-o _Po_!” then a pause as if waiting for a
reply. Then again, “Aw-w-w Po-po! Aw-w-w _Po_-po!”
“It’s father callin’ Popo,” explained Virginia.
“Who’s Popo? Another nigger?”
“Yes,” briefly.
“What does ‘Popo’ stand for? Napoleon?” questioned Roden, much interested.
“No,” she said. “’F you wait an’ listen you’ll hear. Father always calls
like that at first. ’F Po answers tuhecly he’ll jus’ stop. ’F he don’t
answer, father’ll jus’ go on callin’ till he says th’ whole name.”
[Illustration: “AW-W-W POPO!”]
Roden listened with absorbed attention.
“O-o-o-o Popo! Popo! Popo!” rang out the voice, with angry staccato
insistence. “You Popo! Aw-w-w! you _Po_po!” Then, presently, “O-o-o-o!
you Po-po-cat-e-petl!”
“Good heavens!” said Roden, bursting into laughter. “Is that really the
poor little devil’s name?”
“Mh--mh,” said Virginia, with a nod of assent. “There was three of ’em
born all to oncet. One’s called Popocatepetl, an’ one Iztaccihuatl, an’
one Orizaba. We call ’em Popo, an’ Whattle, an’ Zabe.”
“That triumvirate ought to rule something,” said Roden. “Could a nigger
ever be President, Miss Virginia? What a lark it would be to speak of
President Popocatepetl! What’s the other name?”
“Page,” said Miss Herrick.
“Page!” echoed the young Englishman--“_Page?_ why surely that name
belongs to the ‘F.F.V.’s,’ doesn’t it?”
“All the darkies took th’ name o’ th’ fam’lies they b’longed to after th’
war,” she explained. “I had a cook here oncet called Faginia Herrick;
she used to b’long to father ’fo’ th’ war.”
“By gad!” was Roden’s sole remark. “By _gad_!” said he again.
“_You_ needn’t say nothin’!” she exclaimed, breaking suddenly into her
melodious laughter; “there’s two little right _black_ niggers at th’
mill, an’ one’s called Prince Albert and th’ other Queen Victoria, ’n’ ’f
you leave off th’ ‘Prince’ or th’ ‘Queen’ they won’t answer you, neether.”
She was evidently delighted with his expression of face at this, and
released the two dogs in order to indulge more freely in her mirthful
mood. She sat down on the stone steps, letting her arms hang simply at
her sides, and putting down her head, laughed into the hollow lap of her
gray kirtle, as though confiding her surplus merriment to its care.
It was at this moment that the overseer came into sight--a tall, gaunt
man, with a beard that seemed flying away with his round head, after the
fashion of a comet’s tail; little steely blue eyes drawing close to the
bridge of his nose as though it magnetized them; long, crooked teeth, not
unlike the palings in one of his own fences for tint and irregularity;
and a wide-open square smile, like the smile of a Greek comic mask. He
wore a waistcoat of as many hues as Joseph’s renowned garment, a blue
cotton shirt, ginger-colored trousers tucked into heavy mud-crusted
boots, and a straw hat, impossible to describe, tilted to the back of his
head. In his arms he carried the little black-and-tan terrier which Roden
remembered, and twisted its untrimmed ears while talking.
“Howdy? howdy?” he remarked, genially. “My darter Faginia’s tole me ’bout
you. Got all yo’ clo’es lef in Washin’ton? Hey? Got ’em this mornin’?
You don’ sesso? Well! My darter Faginia says as how you’re goin’ in fur
horse-racin’? That so? You don’ sesso? Well, what d’you think er my
darter Faginia, anyhow? Darter, go ’n’ bring me some water; I’m mortal
thirsty.” Then, as the girl disappeared, “Well, what d’you think er her?”
“She seems to me very--very charming,” ventured Roden.
“Well, sir, you ’ain’t got no more idea of th’ sweethearts that girl’s
had--I mean would ’a’ had ’f I’d ’lowed it. The las’ one was Jim Murdoch,
a hoop-pole man. But, sir”--here Mr. Herrick assumed a tone of the most
pompous dignity--“but I will tole you, sir, as how my darter Faginia
shall deceive _no_ retentions, _respecially_ from a hoop-pole man!”
“A hoop-pole man?” said Roden.
“That thar’s hit, sir, an’ I cert’n’y means what I says,” replied the
overseer, relapsing again into his former slipshod easiness of speech and
manner. “Consequently were, the beauty of the question air my darter
Faginia won’t get married twel she gets a mighty good offer.”
“I should say you were perfectly right,” assented Roden.
“Well, yes, sir; I should sesso. I s’pose you ain’t married, air you?”
“No. Do I look very like a married man?” said Roden, who continued to be
amused. He thought the overseer almost as interesting as Virginia.
“Well, no,” assented old Herrick, manipulating his abundant beard
with an air of deep thought. “But the beauty of the question air, you
kyarn’t al’uz tell. Them as looks the mostest married gen’ly ain’t. An’
contrarywise, them as don’t, air--”
“Married?” said Roden.
“Well, considerbul, mostly,” said the overseer.
Here Virginia returned with a gourd of water, keeping the quick-falling
drops from her father’s not too immaculate attire while he drank by
means of her skilfully hollowed hands.
“Yo’ breakfas’ ’s ready,” she said over her shoulder to Roden. He went
in, and found it to be a slight variation on the last night’s meal.
There were some corn-meal cakes--batter cakes, Virginia called them--and
miraculously cooked mutton-chops. A half-hour later the overseer appeared
at the window to offer his services as guide over the farm.
When Roden returned from his investigations it was one of the great clock
in the hall, and the sky like a vast blue banner overhead.
He went out on the “front porch,” and called to Herrick as he crossed
“the yard,” with the little terrier at his heels. “Is there a good view
from that hill just back of the house?” he asked.
“Mos’ people goes fyar crazy over it,” said Herrick. “Hit’s a right
rough climb to the top. Want tuh go up? Faginia kin show you. O-o-o-o-o
Faginia! Faginia!”
Virginia appeared, clad from throat to heels in a vast brown apron, her
half-bare arms covered with flour, and her thick braids skewered across
the top of her head with a big wooden knitting-needle.
“Makin’ bread?” said her father. “Well, yo’ kin get yo’ mammy to finish
that. Mr. Roden here he wants to go trapeezing up to th’ top o’ Peter’s
Mountain. I tole him you could show him.”
“All right,” she said, briefly; “but I kyarn’t walk: the Alderney heifer
stepped on my foot this mornin’. I’ll ride if you like:” this last to
Roden.
“By all means,” he said; “but if you do not mind, I had rather walk.”
“Of co’se,” she said, and disappeared again.
“The beauty of the question air,” said her sire, looking proudly after
her, “that gyrl kin ride like a Injun.”
“She seems to do everything well,” said Roden, with a pleased
recollection of those mutton-chops which Aunt Tishy had confided to him
“Miss Faginia done herself.”
“She cert’n’y does,” said Herrick, and after making some unique excuse
disappeared also.
Miss Herrick appeared a few moments later, again clad in her boyish
attire, and mounted upon a fidgety little roan mare. She had slung a
wicker basket from the saddle, and Roden heard a merry clink as of glass
kissing silver when the mare sidled about.
“That’s a clever-looking little nag,” said Roden. “Is she yours?”
“Nuck,” said Virginia. “I reckon she’s yours; she goes with the place.”
“I didn’t see her this morning,” Roden said, somewhat puzzled.
“No; she’d gone to the shop to get a new shoe; that’s why. I reckon
you’ll name her over.”
“Why?” said Roden. It seemed to him he had never put that monosyllabic
question so often before in the entire course of his life.
“’Cause it ain’t very pretty,” Virginia explained. “Father named
her--it’s Pokeberry.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Roden, laughing. “I rather fancy it. It’s
uncommon, to say the least. I don’t think I’ll change it.”
“Well, there’s two others I _know_ you’ll change,” she asserted. “They’re
two carriage-horses, an’ they’re named Peckerwood an’ Hoppergrass.”
“Capital!” said Roden, laughing again. “Change them?--not much! Shall we
start now?”
It was a perfect day--perfect as only a day in Southern winter-tide
can be. The air was radiant, wine-like, while with a still further
suggestiveness little glittering insects spun around and around in the
sunlight like the particles of gold-leaf in eau-de-vie de Dantzic.
The roads, dried in some sort by the steady wind of the past night
and morning, were mellowed to a dull orange in lieu of their former
startling crimson. Infinite tones of faded browns and grays wrapped wold
and hill-side. The sky, of an intense metallic pallor, was covered with
gauze-like masses of wind-torn cirri. As they went on, a sycamore thrust
its bone-white arms before a dark hollow in the mountain-side, reminding
one of a skeleton guarding the mouth of a cavern, where during its life
it had concealed some treasure. The harsh call of crows, beginning in the
far east, passed in _crescendo_ above their heads, and died away as the
heavy birds flew westward.
Virginia, apparently unconscious of his presence, was watching Roden
narrowly as he walked at her side. Owing to that peculiar faculty with
which only women are endowed, she was enabled thus to observe him while
seemingly absorbed in the sun-shot vista of the road before them. He
had taken off his coat, as the increasing sunlight and the exertion
of walking had overheated him, and his flannel shirt expressed damply
the splendid modelling of his supple body. She noticed how the sunburn
stopped in a line about his throat, the fair flesh showing beneath with a
girlish whiteness, as is often the case with very strong men.
“It’s a heap whiter than mine,” thought Virginia.
“I wish you’d sing,” he said, suddenly. “Will you?”
“A nigger song?” said the girl, with a growing intuition in regard to his
wishes. She then sang as follows:
“Bright sunny mornin’
Nigger feel good,
Axe on he shoulder
Goin’ fur de wood.
Little piece er hoe-cake
’Thout any fat;
White folks quoil
’Case he eat all o’ dat.
Hop ’long, hop ’long, hop ’long, Peter,
Hop ’long, Peter’s son!
Hoppergrass sittin’ on a sweet-e’ayter vine,
Big tuckey-gorbler come up behine,
Hop ’long, Peter’s son.
“One bright mornin’ John did go
Down in de medder fur ter mow;
Ez he mowed acrost de fiel’
Great big sarpint bit him on de heel.
He juck it up right in he hand,
And back he went tuh Maury Ann;
‘Oh, Maury Ann, oh, don’ you see,
One ole sarpint done bit me!’
Hop ’long, hop ’long, hop ’long, Peter,
Hop ’long, Peter’s son.”
Roden was delighted with her rich, reed-noted voice. She imitated the
negroes’ tones to perfection. The inflection and intonation were without
fault.
“How well you do it!” he said. “It’s really awfully pretty. Can’t you
give me another?”
She sang him one or two more, and ended by repeating in a singsong
fashion a little rhyme which convulsed him:
“Mars’r had a leetle dorg,
An’ he was three parts houn’;
Ev’y time he strike a trail
He bounce up off de groun’.”
“They make up all these things, of course?” he asked her.
“Oh yes,” said Virginia: “they’re awful fond of ‘makin’ hymes,’ as they
call it. Here’s another:
“Ef I had a needle an’ thread,
Big ez I could sew,
I’d stitch my ’Liza to my side,
An’ off down de road I’d go.”
He amused himself by trying to sing some of the various ditties after
her, but, as they began to ascend the mountain, found that he needed all
the breath at his command.
The dead leaves, sodden with the winter rains, closed in masses about
the feet of Pokeberry, and of the young Englishman as he tramped
untiringly at her muzzle. The shaft of a young pine rose slender and
virginal from the lace-work of bare trees, its plumy crest breaking with
lucent emerald the sea-blue reach of sky. A cardinal-bird flashed, with
unconscious contrast, against the neutral tints of the woody distance,
meshed as it were in the multitudinous glittering of sunlit twigs. From
the leaf-stirred silence, far in the heart of the forest, came the
urgent rat-a-plan of a woodpecker. Dead leaves occasionally, loosened
by the fitful wind, fell, turning slowly in their descent, now between
the startled ears of Pokeberry, themselves most leaf-like, now upon
Virginia’s skirt or hat, as she sat wordless, listlessly supporting the
reins upon her knee.
They came presently to a narrow mountain stream, clear and brown, over
the sunken leaves. The sunlight through the swaying tendrils of a wild
grape-vine overhead sent dim but sharply defined shadows wavering back
and forth over its bright surface, as though, being spiritualized,
they breathed with a new life. A corn-crake, moving cautiously among
the withered water-grasses, thrust forward its gay crest and peered
inquisitively at them, whereupon the collie cleared the brook with an
arching bound, and set forth in mad pursuit of this new quarry. The crake
at once rose into the blue lift, with the harsh, derisive cry from which
it takes its name.
After a while they came upon a log-cabin set in a little patch of cleared
ground. From a small window close against the roof flaunted a mud-stained
curtain of sacking. The red clay marks responded to a certain morbidness
in Virginia, by suggesting the wiping of bloody hands upon the coarse
stuff. There had been a murder some years before on this very mountain,
and thoughts of a grewsome sort were easily called forth in her when
remembering. A few black-and-white pigs of the genus “nigger” hurtled
squealing down the hill-side, pursued by the indefatigable collie, while
a little fawn-colored child, with whity-brown hair and purplish-white
eyes, stood in the door and apparently bit its thumb at them.
“Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?” quoted Roden, cheerily, whereat the
little darky fled, with a shrill “Yah!” of mingled delight and terror,
into the bacon-perfumed room beyond.
They were now stopped by some draw-bars, which passed, they found
themselves ascending a steep incline sown with large stones, as though
Jove and his giants might have had a sharp encounter just in that spot.
But having gained the top of the bluff, they came upon a view at which
Roden stood and stared in silent admiration. It seemed to him that he
had never before so entirely realized the ball-like character of the
earth. It seemed now to be swinging like a magician’s globe, imprisoned
in another of larger size, which was hollowed from some marvellous,
million-colored gem.
The air had changed suddenly from balmy warmth to a strange damp
keenness, while the sky, which had cleared on their way up, was strewn
from east to west with the same woolly clouds which had at first covered
it. All above them was a lustrous monotone of gray, brightening towards
the east into a pale daffodil, and farther towards the south into a lurid
orange. From south to west a band of vivid violet-blue stretched solidly,
cleft here and there with wedges of pale light slanting in regular order,
like the bayonets of a vast army marching eastward.
“That,” said Virginia, indicating the gorgeous phenomenon, “means rain.”
“Oh, I think not,” said Roden, carelessly.
“Very well,” said Miss Herrick.
The wind blew ever stronger and stronger from the north, shifting
suddenly to the north-east. Virginia felt a heavy splash of water upon
her hand. She said nothing, but held it out to Roden in silence, and at
the same moment the wind, scolding like an old hag who has been deprived
by some adventurous urchin of her dinner, bore down upon them.
“Never mind,” said Roden, “we are only about a quarter of a mile from the
top.”
“Won’t you put on your coat now?” said Virginia, blinded by the blowing
of her hair into her eyes.
He replied that he did not feel the need of it, and strode on a little
ahead. The wind sent his shirt in fine ripples across his back. One could
distinctly see the muscles at work beneath the flexible skin. Strength,
above all things, was what this little barbarian admired, and she saw it
now in a perfection which filled her with unconscious satisfaction.
“My! couldn’t he double that braggin’ Joe Scott up!” she told herself.
“Whew! I’d like to see somebody make him right mad. Couldn’t he lick
’em!”
As they neared the summit the gale became more furious. Roden was obliged
to lead the thoroughly frightened mare, and Virginia’s long hair,
becoming unbound, whipped with the sting of a lash across his face.
She recaptured and held it firmly with one hand, while he, furtively
observing it, thought it must be at least two yards in length. She
assumed a new phase in his eyes, wrapped thus in her plenteous tresses.
A certain boyish look, transmitted to her through the medium of the
short locks about her brow, had vanished completely. She looked like
some mountain Godiva hidden all as in a banner of cloth of gold. Roden
wondered if such marvellous hair was a characteristic of Southern women.
They came at last to the one stunted apple-tree which crowned the noble
crest of the mountain, with an effect as bathetic as the scalp-lock of
an Indian brave. The wind screamed through the gnarled ground-kissing
branches with the sound of a gale through cordage. Pokeberry squatted
ignominiously in the fierce hurly, and put back her nervous ears, while
Virginia swung from the saddle. Once on the ground, she found that to
keep the perpendicular was a matter of some skill. She put one arm around
a mass of the tangled branches and looked up at Roden with a laugh, which
was seized and dashed down the steep declivity or ever it reached his
ears. He in the mean time having tethered the mare securely, resumed his
coat, and unbinding his covert-coat from the saddle, offered to help
the girl on with it. She looked at him in evident surprise, but made
no resistance. As she loosened the branches in order to put her arms
into the sleeves, which were whirling wildly, with an air of reckless
intoxication, a sharp gust blew her, coat and all, directly into Roden’s
arms.
He laughed, disentangling himself as best he might from the wet bondage
of her heavy locks, but she, reddening vividly through all her clear,
sun-browned skin, gave her attention to the garment that he held. It
seemed to her a strange thing that he should offer to lend it. She had
been on rainy expeditions with many men, both English and Virginian,
while none that she could remember had ever before offered to protect her
in such wise from the inclemency of her native heavens.
She looked down a little consciously at the weather-stained tan-color of
the little coat. She felt that it would be an insult to suggest to so
mighty a pedestrian the idea of taking cold; at the same time she was
afraid that such would be the memento he would bear away with him from
the top of Peter’s Mountain. As for herself, she was as accustomed to
wind and rain as one of the big oxeye daisies in her own fields.
[Illustration: ON THE TOP OF PETER’S MOUNTAIN.]
“There’s some sandwiches an’ a glass in that basket,” she said, or rather
shrieked, to Roden. He went to get them, tacking through the stiff wind
with much dexterity, and they partook of thin slices of Aunt Tishy’s
bread and Virginian ham with a heroic disregard of the downpour. All at
once they were confronted by a small ebon figure, hatless and breathless.
“_Popo!_” said Miss Herrick; “what in the name o’ sense are you doin’
here?”
“Oh, Miss Faginia, Miss Faginia,” howled the little black, “de lightnin’
dun gone thoo Marse Johnson’s house an’ kill he an’ he horg! An’ I wuz so
skeered ’bout you I jess took out an’ run up de mounting to see ef you
wuz all right.”
“Well, I am,” said his mistress. “You pore little thing, how wet you are!
Come and get here under these branches.”
The faithful Popocatepetl came and crouched on his heels at her side. He
was drenched to the skin, and his dark hide showed in patches through his
shirt of some thin white stuff, which elsewhere puffed out in irregular
blisters, like the wet linen in a washer-woman’s tub. From a strange
freak of nature, not unusual in these Virginian mountains, his knotty
wool was of a pale tan-color. It is a mistake to think that the little
negro perpetually grins. Nothing absolutely could have been more full of
woe and resignation than the expression of the young Popo as he watched
with Pokeberry the ceaseless flood that swept over hill and valley.
Although comparatively sheltered, there still escaped through the tangled
apple-boughs moisture sufficient to prove extremely unpleasant. The large
drops fell heavy and monotonous, some into the furry hollows of the
mare’s flexile ears, causing her to toss her head with a swift impatience
of movement that set the little metal buckles on her head-gear tinkling
faintly, some upon Roden’s breast and hands, some upon the uncovered head
and cheeks of the girl at his side. She tossed her head once or twice
with a close reproduction of Pokeberry’s impulsive gestures.
The surrounding mountains were by this time entirely blotted from sight
by the lead-colored sheets of wind-urged rain. The branches of the trees
on the slopes below them seemed living creatures, who, frantic with
alarm, tugged and twisted to free themselves from their native boles,
and to flee before the ruffian wind that assaulted them. Blown leaves,
like troops of frightened birds, were driven past in gusts. Not a sound
was to be heard save the ceaseless hiss of the rain on the hard ground,
the creaking of the tortured trees, and the fluctuating roar of the wind
above all else. Pokeberry, cowed and shivering, gazed wistfully down at
the swimming field below.
The darkness had increased palpably within the last five minutes, and the
wind, raging downward through the stems of the tall pines on the eastern
slope of the mountain, made a sound like to the angry breathing of some
giant through his locked teeth.
“That is almost wolfish,” said Roden.
“There _was_ wolves in these mountains when my father was a little boy,”
she responded.
Darker clouds seemed to be ever rolling up from the east, veined with
glittering threads of lightning, which pierced the irregular masses on
all sides like the fronds of an immense leaf. The trees on the slopes,
still wind-swept, seemed anon pale with terror or dark with dread as
their light and dark leaves were alternately tossed upward. Over against
the west was a dull citrine glare, like the smoke that overhangs a
battle-field on a sunlit day, reflected here and there in the slimy soil
and rain-roughened waters of a stream some way beneath them.
Suddenly Virginia turned and swung out of Roden’s coat with one of her
swift movements. “Please put it on,” she said to him.
“Why, no,” he said; “I don’t want it. I’m perfectly comfortable. I don’t
know why I brought it--unless from a happy inspiration in regard to you,”
he added, pleasantly. She turned from him, and stooping, wrapped the
shivering Popo in it.
“They feel the cole so!” she said to Roden, standing erect again. “An’ I
never wrop up.” Roden did not know whether to laugh or to swear.
When the rain had abated somewhat, and they returned to Caryston, he told
himself, as he soothed his inner man with some excellent Scotch whiskey,
that he “really rather liked it in the girl; but--d--n the little
nigger!--that was my pet coat!”