"Why is it that a man thinks he wants more of life"s goods than fatigue, supper and bed, do you suppose, boy?" questioned my Gouverneur Faulkner to me as at last in repletion he leaned back against our giant rooftree, between two of whose hospitable large roots we had made our repast, and lighted a pipe of great fragrance which he had taken from his pocket.
"I would not possess happiness even though I had this nice supper, if I was alone in this great forest, Your Excellency; I would have fear,"
I answered him with a small laugh as I took my corduroy knees into my embrace and looked off into that distant valley below us which was beginning to glow with stars of home lights.
"Didn"t I tell you once that you don"t count, that you are just myself, youngster? You ought not to know I am here. I don"t know you exist except as a form of pleasure of which I do not ask the reason,"
was the answer that my Gouverneur Faulkner made to me.
"I excuse myself away with humbleness for impertinence, Your Excellency," I returned to him.
"If you tried, do you think you could call me Bill, just for to-night, boy?" was the answer he made to my excuses as he puffed a beautiful ring of smoke at me.
"I could not," I answered with an indignation.
"I heard you call Sue Tomlinson "Sue" the first night you danced with her."
"But that Mademoiselle Sue is a woman, my Gouverneur Faulkner," I answered with haste.
"That"s the reason that women get at us to do us, youngster; we don"t approach them as human to human but we go up on their blind side and they come back at us in the dark with a knife." And as he spoke all of the gayness of joy was lost from the voice of my beloved Gouverneur and in its place was a bitterness.
"With pardon I say that it is not a truth of all women, Your Excellency," I answered with pride as my head went up high at his condemnation of the s.e.x of which I was one.
"You don"t know what you are talking about, youngster. They all think I am cold and pa.s.s me along, except a few experienced ladies who--shall I say?--adventure for graft with me. I"ve been too busy really to love or let love but I know "em and you don"t. Let"s stop talking about what concerns neither of us and go to bed. See this young cedar tree? I"m going to throw my blanket across it and with these extra boughs I"ll make a genuine cradle for each of us on the opposite sides of the trunk. Then we"ll cover with your blanket and be as comfortable as two middies in their hammocks in a man of war. This is a piece of woodcraft of my own invention and I"m proud of it, old scout."
And while he talked my Gouverneur Faulkner had prepared those cradles of our blankets unstrapped from the saddles of the horses at feeding time, seated himself upon the edge of one of them and began to pull from his feet his riding boots. "Take off your boots and your coat, youngster, and turn in. I"ll take the windward side and you can bivouac against the fire. Good night!" As he finished speaking my Gouverneur Faulkner rolled beneath that blanket upon the outer edge and left for me the hammock next to the fire, sheltered from a cool wind that had begun to come up from the valley.
Almost immediately, so that I should not have a fright, I lifted the blanket and crawled into the branches of the fragrant tree. Even as I did so I perceived a loud breathing of deep sleep from my Gouverneur Faulkner; but to me came no repose.
Awake through the bright night, I lay there in the sweet branches of the young tree beside the great Gouverneur of one of the greatest states of America and perceived clearly the pa.s.s to which my course of lies and dishonor had led me. And from that wild daredevil, Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye, was born the honest woman Roberta who must extricate herself from a situation not to be longer endured, even if discovery was not upon me.
"I will finish this journey with my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner," I counseled myself, "upon which it is of a certainty that this plot for his ruin in the world of his politics will be averted, and I will return to the home of my Uncle, the General Robert. If I be not discovered in my woman"s estate in a few days" s.p.a.ce of time I will endeavor to do some piece of loving kindness that will keep me in the memory of all who have given me love, from poor black Bonbon up to His Excellency himself here beside me, and then I will go into those trenches of France to give my life for my country, perhaps not as a soldier but as a good nurse of the Red Cross. And never, never, must any living person who has loved Robert Carruthers know that he is a human of dishonor. Nannette will be true to my directions to hide my secret, and wee Pierre will keep it forever because I go to fight for France as he cannot. I will put with great firmness into the mind of Pierre that he is to be of a great devotion to my Uncle, the General Robert, through life.
"And what will you do for that great Gouverneur Faulkner, from whom each day you have stolen more and more affection with your false att.i.tude of much loyalty, to keep from him grief at the loss of you?"
I asked myself with a sob in my heart.
"Forgive me, my beloved chief. When away from you I must die of a coldness," I said to myself in a very low tone into the moonlight.
"Cold? Do you want the whole blanket, youngster? Snuggle into your cradle closer," suddenly answered me my Gouverneur Faulkner as he reached his long arm across the tree trunk to tuck in the blanket about me and again he was immediately in the deep sleep from which my spoken words had but partly awakened him. And then at his bidding I did settle myself down into the fragrant boughs and I wept myself also into a deep sleep.
The round sun was high over that Old Harpeth hill when I opened my eyes. For a moment I did not see clearly and then I looked straight into the deep eyes of my Gouverneur Faulkner. which for that first time I had been able to see to be the color of violets in the twilight. He was seated beside me smoking the fragrant pipe and looking down at me with a great wonderment that was mingled with as great a tenderness.
"Boy," he asked softly, "are you sure G.o.d has got that pattern of you put away carefully in France?"
Before I could make answer to him a picture flashed into my mind. When still a child one morning I opened my eyes to find my loved father bending over me and in the hollow of his arm he held my mother in her breakfast gown of lace and ribbons. He spoke:
"Some day, Celeste, a man will bend over her and watch her waken. G.o.d grant it will be with the love--that produced that beauty. Look at that love curl!"
And at the recall of that picture of me into my mind, my hands flew to my face to find that same treacherous curl had descended to my cheek from the mop above. With a fury of embarra.s.sment I sprang to my feet from under that blanket.
"I have a great hunger," I said as I observed a very crisp breakfast to be prepared upon the coals of the fire. "I must have a fragment of bacon upon the instant." And I bent over the fire to obtain what I had demanded for a cover to my confusion.
"No, you don"t, until you"ve washed that face and those hands that still have the supper smudge on them, in the pool down there. I left the soap and the dry sleeves and bosom of a flannel shirt for you.
Don"t you pack towels in a kit in your country?" With which laughing answer my Gouverneur Faulkner denied unto me an immediate breakfast.
"You thought him to admire the love curl, while he was remarking the soil upon your face, Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye," I laughed to myself as I plunged my face into the icy pool.
After a finish to the breakfast, my Gouverneur Faulkner gave to me the information that we must tether the good horses and make the remainder of the journey by walking, which we did for hardly a short hour.
"The wildcat still is straight up Turkey Gulch and we"ll have to scramble for it. It"s hid like the nest of an old turkey hen," he said to me as we set out upon the mounting of a very steep precipice.
"What is that word, "wildcat still"?" I asked as I slid over a great rock with emerald moss encrusted, and struggled beside my Gouverneur Faulkner through a heavy underbrush of leafy greenness.
"A place where men make whiskey in defiance of the law of their State," he answered me as he held aside a long branch of green that was pink tipped, so that I might slip thereunder without a scratching.
"Are you not the law of the State, my Gouverneur Faulkner?" I asked of him as I pulled myself by his arm through the thickness.
"I"m all that, but I"m the son of Old Harpeth and Jim Todd"s blood brother first. Some day I"ll smoke Jim out of his hole and get him a good job. Now, wait a minute and see what happens," and as he spoke my Gouverneur Faulkner stood very still for a long minute. As I sat at his side upon the fallen trunk of a large tree I regarded him with admiration, because he had the aspect of some beautiful, lithe animal of the woods as he listened with a deep attention. Then very quickly he put his two long fingers to his mouth, and behold the call of a wild bird came from between his lips. Twice it was repeated and then he stood again in deep attention. I made not even a little breathing as I too listened.
Then came three clear notes of that same wild bird in reply from not very far up the mountain from us.
"That"s Jim, the old turkey; come on!" said my Gouverneur Faulkner as he again began to break through the leafy barriers of the low trees.
And in a very short s.p.a.ce of time a man emerged from a little path that led behind a tall cliff of the gray rocks. He was a very large and a very fierce man and I might have had a fright of him if his blue eyes had not held such a kindness and joy in them at the sight of my Gouverneur Faulkner.
"Howdy, Bill," he said with no handshake or other form of a comrade"s greeting.
"Howdy, Jim," returned my Gouverneur Faulkner in a manner of the same indifference but with also an expression in his face of delight at the sight of his blood brother, that Mr. Jim Todd.
"That thar boy a shet-mouth?"
"He"s Bob, and as hard as a nut," was the introduction I had from my Gouverneur Faulkner.
"Then come on," with which command that wild man led us around the tall cliff of gray rock, over which climbed a sweet vine of rosy blossoming, which I now know to call a laurel, and we arrived in front of a small and low hut that was built against the rocks. A clear, small stream made a very noisy way past the door of the hut, but save for its clamor all was silent.
"Where are the boys?" asked my Gouverneur Faulkner.
"Hid in the bushes. I"ve got the man tied back in the still room. I "low he ain"t no revenue but they "low different. Come back and see if you kin make out his gibberish."
"Come on, Robert," said my Gouverneur Faulkner to me as he followed the wild Jim into the hut and back into a room that was as a cave cut into the rock. And I, Robert Carruthers, followed him--to my death.
Seated upon a rude bench in that cave room, bound with a rope of great size, disheveled and soiled, but with all of the n.o.bility of his great estate in his grave face, was my adored friend, Capitaine, the Count de La.s.selles! As we entered he rose beside the bench and in that rising displayed a chain by which one of his feet was made fast to the rock of the wall.
"Good morning, sir," said my Gouverneur Faulkner, as if greeting a gentleman upon the street of that city of Hayesville.
"Also a good morning, sir," made reply my poor Capitaine, the Count de La.s.selles. And he stood with a fine and great courtesy waiting for my Gouverneur Faulkner to state to him what his visit could portend, as would he have done in his regimental room at Tour.
And as he stood, for that very long minute, there expired the last moments of the life of Robert Carruthers. A stream of light fell from the little window high in the rock upon his luckless head as he stood as if frozen into a statue of great fear. And as he so stood, the eyes of the Capitaine, the Count de La.s.selles, fell upon him and he started forward as far as the length of the chain by which he was bound would allow him and from there held out his hand to the frozen boy standing in the stream of light from high heaven.
"My most beautiful lady Roberta, do I find that it is you who have come to my rescue?" he questioned. "I lost you, _mon enfant_, in that great New York."