"Monsieur le Gouverneur, it is not necessary that I behold those lands and those mules; the signature of the great Gouverneur of the State of Harpeth will make a mule to grow from a desert, in the eyes of the French Government," he said with a smile of great charm spreading over his very small countenance.
But just at this moment, when a reply would have been of an awkwardness to make, the music, which is made by a most delightful band of black men for all eating in that Club of Old Hickory, began to play the great Ma.r.s.eillaise, and with one motion all of the gentlemen in that dining room rose to their feet in respect to the distinguished guest of that Old Hickory Club. Also many friendly glances were cast upon me, which I returned with a smile of great grat.i.tude.
"Yes, the pen is mightier than the mule stick in his eyes, the scoundrel," remarked my Uncle, the General Robert, as I drove to the Capitol with him in his car, while the Gouverneur Faulkner took his guest with him in his.
"Is any proof been found that he shall not do this robbery to France, my Uncle Robert?" I asked with great eagerness.
"Trap is about ready to spring, but not quite. G.o.d, but Jeff Whitworth is a skilled thief! I know what he is up to but I can"t quite get it on the surface. Keep the French robber busy, boy, for a little longer, and I"ll land him. Here we are at the office! Now you get busy keeping them busy--and I"ll land "em. If not, I"ll go and show France what real fighting is and I"ll take you with me into the worst trench they"ve got! Battles, indeed--they ought to have been at Chickamauga.
Now depart!" With which words my Uncle, the General Robert, got out of the car and left me to direct it to wherever I chose.
"I have a warmth at heart that the three men most beloved of me would go onto the French battle line with me," I murmured to myself as the black chauffeur drove me back to that Club of Old Hickory to get me again in company of my Buzz. "And yet it is the custom of women to believe that they command the deepest affection of which a man is possessed. And, _helas_, it is believed to be impossible for a comrade that he be also a lover!"
It has been my good fortune to be one of the guests at many very brilliant receptions of much state in some of the very grand and ancient palaces of the different countries of Europe, but at none of them have I seen a greater brilliancy than at the one given in his Mansion by the Gouverneur Faulkner of the State of Harpeth in America.
All of that old Mansion, which has the high ceilings and the decorations of a palace, if not quite the size, was adorned with very large ma.s.ses of a most lovely and handsome flower, which is of many shades of a pink hue set in dark and shining leaves and which is called the rhododendron. There were many lights and music of a softness I have never heard equaled, because the souls of those black men seem to be formed for a very strange kind of music. Also I had never beheld women of a more loveliness than those of the State of Harpeth, who had come from many small cities near to Hayesville at an invitation of very careful selection for their beauty by my Buzz.
"Let"s give him a genuine dazzle," he had remarked while making a list for the sending of the cards.
And most beautiful of all those beautiful _grande dames_ was that Madam Patricia Whitworth, who, with her husband, stood at the side of His Excellency, the great Gouverneur Faulkner, for the receiving of his guests. Her eyes of the blue flowers set in the snow of crystals were in a gleaming and the costume that she wore was but a few wisps of gossamer used for the revealing of her radiant body. In my black and stiff attire of the raven I stood near to the other hand of the Gouverneur Faulkner and there was such an anger for her in my heart that it was difficult that I made a return of the smile she cast upon me at every few minutes. Was there a mockery in that smile, that she had discovered my woman"s estate and was using her own beauty for a challenge to me? I could not tell nor could I judge exactly what the smile of boldness which the Lieutenant, the Count de Bourdon, cast upon me, might mean. And in doubt and anxiety I stood there in that great salon for many hours to make conversation with the guest of honor easy with those who came to him for presentation, until at last I was so weary that I could not make even a good night to my Uncle, the General Robert, when we entered, long after midnight, the doors of Twin Oaks.
When in my own apartment, alone with the beautiful Grandmamma, I cast myself upon the bed upon which my father had had birth, and wept with all my woman"s heart which beat so hard under that attire of the raven.
"Scarcely one more day and perhaps I must flee in dishonor from all the love of these friends," I sobbed to myself, but deeper than all that I wept for the picture of that beautiful woman at the side of my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner.
And then suddenly as I lay in my weeping the telephone upon the table beside my bed gave a loud ringing in the darkness that was long after midnight. Very quickly from fear I covered my head with my pillow and waited with a great fluttering of heart.
Then a second time it rang with a great fury and I perceived that I must make a response to it.
I arose and took that receiver into my hand and spoke with a fine though husky calmness.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Is that you, Robert?" came the voice of my beloved Gouverneur, which made the heart of that anguished Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye, beat into a sudden great happiness though also alarm.
"Yes, Your Excellency."
"Can you dress very quietly, get your car and come up here to the Mansion without letting anybody know of it?"
"I will do what you command."
"I need you, boy, and I need you quick."
"I come."
"Stop the car at the street beyond the side door and come in that way.
Cato will let you in. Come to my bedroom quietly so as not to wake Jenkins. Can you find your way?"
For just one single long second that _grande dame_, Roberta, the Marquise of Grez and Bye, cowered in fear upon her warm bed in the house of her Uncle, the General Robert, at the thought of going out into the night at the command of a man, and then that devoted daredevil, Mr. Robert Carruthers, answered into the telephone to the Gouverneur Faulkner:
"Immediately I come to you."
CHAPTER XVII
THE TALL TIMBERS OF OLD HARPETH
Is it that there comes to the world an hour in the twenty and four in which it lays aside the mortality of the earth and clothes itself in an immortality of a very great awe? I think that it is so; and it was out into the whiteness of that hour that I stepped when I had successfully pa.s.sed from my room to the garden of the home of my Uncle, the General Robert, which is also the home of my American ancestors. A command for my presence had come to me from the loved Gouverneur Faulkner and it was needful that I make all possible haste; but it seemed to me that all of the beautiful faded flowers of my dead grandmammas in that garden rose up around me for beguilement and gave to me a perfume that they had kept in saving for the Roberta, some day to come across the waters to them. And all of their little descendants, the opening blossoms of spring, also gave perfume to me in a mist in the white moonlight, while a few fragrant rose vines bent to detain me as I left that home of my grandmothers to go out into that sleeping city, alone. I had a great fear, but yet a great devotion drew me and in a very few minutes I had driven my Cherry from the garage and was on my way through the silent streets to--I did not know what.
At the door of the Mansion I was admitted by my good Cato, who was attired in a very long red flannel sleeping garment, with a red cap also of the flannel tied down upon the white wool of his head.
"Has you got dat hoodoo, little Mas"?" he demanded of me as I pa.s.sed into the hall beneath the candle in a tall stand of silver which he held high over my head.
"Yes, good Cato," I made answer to him and I was indeed glad that I had now of a habit put his gift under the heel of my left foot. It gave me great courage.
"De Governor is up in his room and you kin go right up. I never heard of no such doings as is going on in dis house dis night with that there wild man with a gun five feet long, coming and going like de wind. Go on up, honey, and see what you kin do to dem with dat hoodoo." With which information good Cato started me up the stairs.
"First door to the right, front, and don"t knock," he called in a whisper that might have come from his tomb in death as he slowly retired into the darkness below with his candle.
For a very long minute I stood before that door in the dim light that came through one of the wide windows from the moon without.
"What is this madness that you perform, Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye?" I made demand of myself while my knees trembled in the trousers of heavy gray worsted.
"Robert Carruthers goes to his chief in an hour of need and he is descended of that Madam Donaldson who had no fear of the Indian or the bear when there was danger to her beloved," I made answer to myself and softly I turned the handle of that door and entered the room of the Gouverneur Faulkner.
"Is that you, Robert?" came a question in his voice from a large table over by the window. The room was entirely in shadow, except for the shaded light upon the table, under whose rays I remarked the head and shoulders of that Gouverneur Faulkner, at whose bidding I had come out into the dead of the night. "Come over here and walk softly, so as not to stir up Jenkins," he commanded me and I went immediately to his side, even if I did experience a difficulty in the breath of Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye.
"What is it that you wish, my Gouverneur Faulkner?" I asked as I looked down upon him as he sat with a paper in his hand regarding it intently. And as I looked I observed that he, as well as I, had not entirely disrobed after that very brilliant reception. He had discarded his coat of the raven and also what is called a vest in America, and he was very beautiful to me in the whiteness of his very fine linen above which his dark bronze hair with its silver crests, that I had always observed to be in a very sleek order, was tossed into a mop that resembled the usual appearance of my own. His eyes were very deep under their heavy lashes but of the brilliancy of the stars in the blackness of a dark night.
"Sit down here under the light beside me," was his next command to me, and he reached out one of his slender and powerful hands and drew me down into a chair very close beside him.
"What is it?" I asked as my head came so close to his that I felt the warmth of his breath on my cold cheek.
"Hold these two fragments of paper together and translate the French written upon them literally," he said to me as he handed me two small pieces of paper upon which there was writing.
And this is what I discovered to be written:
"Honored Madam:
"The one at the head of all has sent me to this place to inspect grazing lands and make report. I send in a report of what is not here and the signing of the papers by your Gouverneur Faulkner must be done quickly in blindness before a discovery of what is not--"
"It is written to a woman," I said very quietly as I made a finish of reading.
"Yes, boy, to a woman. I have made my last fight to--to hold an old belief, which in some way seemed to be--be one of my foundation stones. The General is right: they are all alike, the soft, beautiful, lying things. The truth is not in them, and their own or a man"s honor is a plaything. That piece of paper was sent me by a man up in the mountains of Old Harpeth, who loves me with the same blood bond that I love you, boy, all on account of a gun struck up in the hands of his enemy. Here"s the note he sent with it.
"Bill, we cotched a furren man fer a revenue up by the still at Turkey Gulch and this was in his pocket. I made out to read yo name. I send it. The man is kept tied. What is mules worth?
Send price and what to do with this man critter by son Jim.
h.e.l.l, Bill, they ain"t no grazing fer five thousand mules on Paradise Ridge, but I know a place.