"Well, here we are, little man."
At the yard gate there was a great barking of dogs, and a great shout of welcome from the negroes who came forward to take the horses. To each of them the Major gave a little package, which each darky took with shining teeth and a laugh of delight-all looking with wonder at the curious little stranger with his rifle and c.o.o.nskin cap, until a scowl from the Major checked the smile that started on each black face. Then the Major led Chad up a flight of steps and into a big hall and on into a big drawing-room, where there was a huge fireplace and a great fire that gave Chad a pang of homesickness at once. Chad was not accustomed to taking off his hat when he entered a house in the mountains, but he saw the Major take off his, and he dropped his own cap quickly. The Major sank into a chair.
"Here we are, little man," he said, kindly.
Chad sat down and looked at the books, and the portraits and prints, and the big mirrors and the carpets on the floor, none of which he had ever seen before, and he wondered at it all and what it all might mean. A few minutes later, a tall lady in black, with a curl down each side of her pale face, came in. Like old Tom, the driver, the Major, too, had been wondering what his sister, Miss Lucy, would think of his bringing so strange a waif home, and now, with sudden humor, he saw himself fortified.
"Sister," he said, solemnly, "here"s a little kinsman of yours. He"s a great-great-grandson of your great-great-uncle-Chadwick Buford. That"s his name. What kin does that make us?"
"Hush, brother," said Miss Lucy, for she saw the boy reddening with embarra.s.sment and she went across and shook hands with him, taking in with a glance his coa.r.s.e strange clothes and his soiled hands and face and his tangled hair, but pleased at once with his shyness and his dark eyes. She was really never surprised at any caprice of her brother, and she did not show much interest when the Major went on to tell where he had found the lad-for she would have thought it quite possible that he might have taken the boy out of a circus. As for Chad, he was in awe of her at once-which the Major noticed with an inward chuckle, for the boy had shown no awe of him. Chad could hardly eat for shyness at supper and because everything was so strange and beautiful, and he scarcely opened his lips when they sat around the great fire, until Miss Lucy was gone to bed. Then he told the Major all about himself and old Nathan and the Turners and the school-master, and how he hoped to come back to the Bluegra.s.s, and go to that big college himself, and he amazed the Major when, glancing at the books, he spelled out the t.i.tles of two of Scott"s novels, "The Talisman" and "Ivanhoe," and told how the school-master had read them to him. And the Major, who had a pa.s.sion for Sir Walter, tested Chad"s knowledge, and he could mention hardly a character or a scene in the two books that did not draw an excited response from the boy.
"Wouldn"t you like to stay here in the Bluegra.s.s now and go to school?"
Chad"s eyes lighted up.
"I reckon I would; but how am I goin" to school, now, I"d like to know? I ain"t got no money to buy books, and the school-teacher said you have to pay to go to school, up here."
"Well, we"ll see about that," said the Major, and Chad wondered what he meant. Presently the Major got up and went to the sideboard and poured out a drink of whiskey and, raising it to his lips, stopped:
"Will you join me?" he asked, humorously, though it was hard for the Major to omit that formula even with a boy.
"I don"t keer if I do," said Chad, gravely. The Major was astounded and amused, and thought that the boy was not in earnest, but he handed him the bottle and Chad poured out a drink that staggered his host, and drank it down without winking. At the fire, the Major pulled out his chewing tobacco. This, too, he offered and Chad accepted, equalling the Major in the accuracy with which he reached the fireplace thereafter with the juice, carrying off his accomplishment, too, with perfect and unconscious gravity. The Major was nigh to splitting with silent laughter for a few minutes, and then he grew grave.
"Does everybody drink and chew down in the mountains?"
"Yes, sir," said Chad. "Everybody makes his own licker where I come from."
"Don"t you know it"s very bad for little boys to drink and chew?"
"No, sir."
"Did n.o.body ever tell you it was very bad for little boys to drink and chew?"
"No, sir"-not once had Chad forgotten that.
"Well, it is."
Chad thought for a minute. "Will it keep me from gittin" to be a BIG man?"
"Yes."
Chad quietly threw his quid into the fire.
"Well, I be d.a.m.ned," said the Major under his breath. "Are you goin" to quit?"
"Yes, sir."
Meanwhile, the old driver, whose wife lived on the next farm, was telling the servants over there about the queer little stranger whom his master had picked up on the road that day, and after Chad was gone to bed, the Major got out some old letters from a chest and read them over again. Chadwick Buford was his great-grandfather"s twin brother, and not a word had been heard of him since the two had parted that morning on the old Wilderness Road, away back in the earliest pioneer days. So, the Major thought and thought suppose-suppose? And at last he got up and with an uplifted candle, looked a long while at the portrait of his grandfather that hung on the southern wall. Then, with a sudden humor, he carried the light to the room where the boy was in sound sleep, with his head on one st.u.r.dy arm, his hair loose on the pillow, and his lips slightly parted and showing his white, even teeth; he looked at the boy a long time and fancied he could see some resemblance to the portrait in the set of the mouth and the nose and the brow, and he went back smiling at his fancies and thinking-for the Major was sensitive to the claim of any drop of the blood in his own veins-no matter how diluted. He was a handsome little chap.
"How strange! How strange!"
And he smiled when he thought of the boy"s last question.
"Where"s YO" mammy?"
It had stirred the Major.
"I am like you, Chad," he had said. "I"ve got no mammy-no nothin", except Miss Lucy, and she don"t live here. I"m afraid she won"t be on this earth long. n.o.body lives here but me, Chad."
CHAPTER 9.
MARGARET
The Major was in town and Miss Lucy had gone to spend the day with a neighbor; so Chad was left alone.
"Look aroun", Chad, and see how you like things," said the Major. "Go anywhere you please."
And Chad looked around. He went to the barn to see his old mare and the Major"s horses, and to the kennels, where the fox-hounds reared against the palings and sniffed at him curiously; he strolled about the quarters, where the little pickaninnies were playing, and out to the fields, where the servants were at work under the overseer, Jerome Conners, a tall, thin man with shrewd eyes, a sour, sullen face, and protruding upper teeth. One of the few smiles that ever came to that face came now when the overseer saw the little mountaineer. By and by Chad got one of the "hands" to let him take hold of the plough and go once around the field, and the boy handled the plough like a veteran, so that the others watched him, and the negro grinned, when he came back, and said
"You sutinly can plough fer a fac"!"
He was lonesome by noon and had a lonely dinner, during which he could scarcely realize that it was really he-Chad-Chad sitting up at the table alone and being respectfully waited on by a kinky-headed little negro girl-called Thanky-ma"am because she was born on Thanksgiving day-and he wondered what the Turners would think if they could see him now-and the school-master. Where was the school-master? He began to be sorry that he hadn"t gone to town to try to find him. Perhaps the Major would see him-but how would the Major know the school-master? He was sorry he hadn"t gone. After dinner he started out-doors again. Earth and sky were radiant with light. Great white tumbling clouds were piled high all around the horizon-and what a long length of sky it was in every direction down in the mountains, he had to look straight up, sometimes, to see the sky at all. Blackbirds chattered in the cedars as he went to the yard gate. The field outside was full of singing meadow-larks, and crows were cawing in the woods beyond. There had been a light shower, and on the dead top of a tall tree he saw a buzzard stretching his wings out to the sun. Past the edge of the woods, ran a little stream with banks that were green to the very water"s edge, and Chad followed it on through the woods, over a worn rail-fence, along a sprouting wheat-field, out into a pasture in which sheep and cattle were grazing, and on, past a little hill, where, on the next low slope, sat a great white house with big white pillars, and Chad climbed on top of the stone fence-and sat, looking. On the portico stood a tall man in a slouch hat and a lady in black. At the foot of the steps a boy-a head taller than Chad perhaps-was rigging up a fishing-pole. A negro boy was leading a black pony toward the porch, and, to his dying day, Chad never forgot the scene that followed. For, the next moment, a little figure in a long riding-skirt stood in the big doorway and then ran down the steps, while a laugh, as joyous as the water running at his feet, floated down the slope to his ears. He saw the negro stoop, the little girl bound lightly to her saddle; he saw her black curls shake in the sunlight, again the merry laugh tinkled in his ears, and then, with a white plume nodding from her black cap, she galloped off and disappeared among the trees; and Chad sat looking after her-thrilled, mysteriously thrilled-mysteriously saddened, straightway. Would he ever see her again?
The tall man and the lady in black went in-doors, the negro disappeared, and the boy at the foot of the steps kept on rigging his pole. Several times voices sounded under the high creek bank below him, but, quick as his ears were, Chad did not hear them. Suddenly there was a cry that startled him, and something flashed in the sun over the edge of the bank and flopped in the gra.s.s.
"s...o...b..ll!" an imperious young voice called below the bank, "get that fish!"
On the moment Chad was alert again-somebody was fishing down there-and he sprang from his perch and ran toward the fish just as a woolly head and a jet-black face peeped over the bank.
The pickaninny"s eyes were stretched wide when he saw the strange figure in c.o.o.nskin cap and moccasins running down on him, his face almost blanched with terror, and he loosed his hold and, with a cry of fright, rolled back out of sight. Chad looked over the bank. A boy of his own age was holding another pole, and, hearing the little darky slide down, he said, sharply:
"Get that fish, I tell you!"
"Look dar, Mars" Dan, look dar!"
The boy looked around and up and stared with as much wonder as his little body-servant, but with no fear.
"Howdye!" said Chad; but the white boy stared on silently.
"Fishin"?" said Chad.
"Yes," said Dan, shortly-he had shown enough curiosity and he turned his eyes to his cork. "Get that fish, s...o...b..ll," he said again.
"I"ll git him fer ye," Chad said; and he went to the fish and unhooked it and came down the bank with the perch in one hand and the pole in the other.