In Her Own Right Part 5

Croyden nodded. "Provided you will stay with me--and if you can find me a cook. Who cooks your meals?"

"Lawd, seh! find yo a cook. Didn' Jos'phine cook fur de Cun'l all he life--Jos'phine, she my wife, seh--she jest gone nex' do', 'bout some'n." He got up--"I calls her, seh."

Croyden stopped him.

"Never mind," he said; "she will be back, presently, and there is ample time. Any one live in these other cabins?"

"No, seh! we's all wha' left. De udder n.i.g.g.e.rs done gone 'way, sence de Cun'l died, coz deah war nothin' fur dem to do no mo', an' no buddy to pays dem.--Dyar is Jos'phine, now, sir, she be hear torectly. An' heah comes Marster d.i.c.k, hisself."

Croyden arose and went toward the front of the house to meet him.

The agent was an elderly man; he wore a black broadcloth suit, shiny at the elbows and shoulder blades, a stiff white shirt, a wide roomy collar, bound around by a black string tie, and a broad-brimmed drab-felt hat. His greeting was as to one he had known all his life.

"How do you do, Mr. Croyden!" he exclaimed. "I'm delighted to make your acquaintance, sir." He drew out a key and opened the front door.

"Welcome to Clarendon, sir, welcome! Let us hope you will like it enough to spend a little time here, occasionally."

"I'm sure I too hope so," returned Croyden; "for I am thinking of making it my home."

"Good! Good! It's an ideal place!" exclaimed the agent. "It's convenient to Baltimore; and Philadelphia, and New York, and Washington aren't very far away. Exactly what the city people who can afford it, are doing now,--making their homes in the country. Hampton's a town, but it's country to you, sir, when compared to Northumberland--open the shutters, Mose, so we can see.... This is the library, with the dining-room behind it, sir--and on the other side of the hall is the drawing-room. Open it, Mose, we will be over there presently. You see, sir, it is just as Colonel Duval left it. Your father gave instructions that nothing should be changed. He was a great friend of the Colonel, was he not, sir?"

"I believe he was," said Croyden. "They met at the White Sulphur, where both spent their summers--many years before the Colonel died."

"There, hangs the Colonel's sword--he carried it through the war, sir--and his pistols--and his silk-sash, and here, in the corner, is one of his regimental guidons--and here his portrait in uniform--handsome man, wasn't he? And as gallant and good as he was handsome. Maryland lost a brave son, when he died, sir."

"He looks the soldier," Croyden remarked.

"And he was one, sir--none better rode behind Jeb Stuart--and never far behind, sir, never far behind!"

"He was in the cavalry?"

"Yes, sir. Seventh Maryland Cavalry--he commanded it during the last two years of the war--went in a lieutenant and came out its colonel. A fine record, sir, a fine record! Pity it is, he had none to leave it to!--he was the last of his line, you know, the last of the line--not even a distant cousin to inherit."

Croyden looked up at the tall, slender man in Confederate gray, with clean-cut aristocratic features, wavy hair, and long, drooping mustache. What a figure he must have been at the head of his command, or leading a charge across the level, while the guns of the Federals belched smoke, and flame and leaden death.

"They offered him a brigade," the agent was saying, "but he declined it, preferring to remain with his regiment."

"What did he do when the war was over?" Croyden asked.

"Came home, sir, and resumed his law practice. Like his great leader, he accepted the decision as final. He didn't spend the balance of his life living in the past."

"And why did he never marry? Surely, such a man" (with a wave of his hand toward the portrait) "could have picked almost where he chose!"

"No one ever just knew, sir--it had to do with Miss Borden,--the sister of Major Borden, sir, who lives on the next place. They were sweethearts once, but something or somebody came between them--and thereafter, the Colonel never seemed to think of love. Perhaps, old Mose knows it, and if he comes to like you, sir, he may tell you the story. You understand, sir, that Colonel Duval is Mose's old master, and that every one stands or falls, in his opinion, according as they measure up to him. I hope you intend to keep him, sir--he has been a faithful caretaker, and there is still good service in him--and his wife was the Colonel's cook, so she must have been competent. She would never cook for anyone, after he died. She thought she belonged to Clarendon, sort of went with the place, you understand. Just stayed and helped Mose take care of it. She doubtless will resume charge of the kitchen again, without a word. It's the way of the old negroes, sir.

The young ones are pretty worthless--they've got impudent, and independent and won't work, except when they're out of money. Excuse me, I ramble on----"

"I'm much interested," said Croyden; "as I expect to live here, I must learn the ways of the people."

"Well, let Mose boss the n.i.g.g.e.rs for you, at first; he understands them, he'll make them stand around. Come over to the drawing-room, sir, I want you to see the furniture, and the family portraits.... There, sir, is a set of twelve genuine Hepplewhite chairs--no doubt about it, for the invoice is among the Colonel's papers. I don't know much about such things, but a man was through here, about a year ago, and, would you believe it, when he saw the original invoice and looked at the chairs, he offered me two thousand dollars for them. Of course, as I had been directed by your father to keep everything as the Colonel had it, I just laughed at him. You see, sir, they have the three feathers, and are beautifully carved, otherwise. And, here, is a lowboy, with the sh.e.l.l and the fluted columns, and the cabriole legs, carved on the knees, and the claw and ball feet. He offered two hundred dollars for it. And this sofa, with the lion's claw and the eagle's wing, he wanted to buy it, too. In fact, sir, he wanted to buy about everything in the house--including the portraits. There are two by Peale and one by Stuart--here are the Peales, sir--the lady in white, and the young officer in Continental uniform; and this is the Stuart--the gentleman in knee breeches and velvet coat. I think he is the same as the one in uniform, only later in life. They are the Colonel's grandparents, sir: Major Daniel Duval, of the Tenth Maryland Line, and his wife; she was a Miss Paca--you know the family, of course, sir. The Major's commission, sir, hangs in the hall, between the Colonel's own and his father's--he was an officer in the Mexican war, sir. It was a fighting family, sir, a fighting family--and a gentle one as well. 'The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the daring.'"

There was enough of the South Carolinian of the Lowlands in Croyden, to appreciate the Past and to honor it. He might not know much concerning Hepplewhite nor the beauty of his lines and carving, and he might be wofully ignorant of his own ancestors, having been bred in a State far removed from their nativity, for he had never given a thought to the old things, whether of furniture or of forebears--they were of the inanimate; his world had to do only with the living and what was incidental to it. The Eternal Now was the Fetich and the G.o.d of Northumberland, all it knew and all it lived for--and he, with every one else, had worshipped at its shrine.

It was different here, it seemed! and the spirit of his long dead mother, with her heritage of aristocratic lineage, called to him, stirring him strangely, and his appreciation, that was sleeping and not dead, came slowly back to life. The men in buff-and-blue, in small-clothes, in gray, the old commissions, the savour of the past that clung around them, were working their due. For no man of culture and refinement--nay, indeed, if he have but their veneer--can stand in the presence of an honorable past, of ancestors distinguished and respected, whether they be his or another's, and be unmoved.

"And you say there are none to inherit all these things?" Croyden exclaimed. "Didn't the original Duval leave children?"

The agent shook his head. "There was but one son to each generation, sir--and with the Colonel there was none."

"Then, having succeeded to them by right of purchase, and with no better right outstanding, it falls to me to see that they are not shamed by the new owner. Their portraits shall remain undisturbed either by collectors or by myself. Moreover, I'll look up my own ancestors. I've got some, down in South Carolina and up in Ma.s.sachusetts, and if their portraits be in existence, I'll add reproductions to keep the Duvals company. Ancestors by inheritance and ancestors by purchase. The two of them ought to keep me straight, don't you think?" he said, with a smile.

IV

PARMENTER'S BEQUEST

Croyden, with d.i.c.k as guide and old Mose as forerunner and shutter-opener, went through the house, even unto the garret.

As in the downstairs, he found it immaculate. Josephine had kept everything as though the Colonel himself were in presence. The bed linen, the coverlids, the quilts, the blankets were packed in trunks, the table-linen and china in drawers and closets. None of them was new--practically the entire furnishing antedated 1830, and much of them 1800--except that, here and there, a few old rugs of oriental weaves, relieved the bareness of the hardwood floors.

The one concession to modernism was a bath-room, but its tin tub and painted iron wash-stand, with the plumbing concealed by wainscoting, proclaimed it, alas, of relatively ancient date. And, for a moment, Croyden contrasted it with the shower, the porcelain, and the tile, of his Northumberland quarters, and shivered, ever so slightly. It would be the hardest to get used to, he thought. As yet, he did not know the isolation of the long, interminably long, winter evenings, with absolutely nothing to do and no place to go--and no one who could understand.

At length, when they were ready to retrace their steps to the lower floor, old Mose had disappeared.

"Gone to tell his wife that the new master has come," said d.i.c.k. "Let us go out to the kitchen."

And there they found her--bustling around, making the fire, her head tied up in a bandana, her sleeves rolled to the shoulders. She turned, as they entered, and dropped them an old-fashioned curtsy.

"Josephine!" said d.i.c.k, "here is Mr. Croyden, the new master. Can you cook for him, as well as you did for Colonel Duval?"

"Survent, marster," she said to Croyden, with another curtsy--then, to the agent, "Kin I cooks, Marster d.i.c.k! Kin I cooks? Sut'n'y, I kin.

Don' yo t'inks dis n.i.g.g.e.r's forgot--jest yo waits, Marster Croyden, I shows yo, seh, sho' nuf--jest gives me a little time to get my han' in, seh."

"You won't need much time," d.i.c.k commented. "The Colonel considered her very satisfactory, sir, very satisfactory, indeed. And he was a competent judge, sir, a very competent judge."

"Oh, we'll get along," said Croyden, with a smile at Josephine. "If you could please Colonel Duval, you will more than please me."

"Thankee, seh!" she replied, bobbing down again. "I sho' tries, seh."

"Have you had any experience with negro servants?" d.i.c.k asked, as they returned to the library.

"No," Croyden responded: "I have always lived at a Club."

"Well, Mose and his wife are of the old times--you can trust them, thoroughly, but there is one thing you'll have to remember, sir: they are nothing but overgrown children, and you'll have to discipline them accordingly. They don't know what it is to be impertinent, sir; they have their faults, but they are always respectful."

"Can I rely on them to do the buying?"