Mistress Anne Part 18

When they came to the ridge Richard drew Anne's horse, with his own, among the trees. He left Eve to Pip. Winifred and her husband were with David.

Far off in the distance a steady old hound gave tongue--then came the music of the pack--the swift silent figure of the fox, straight across the open moonlighted s.p.a.ce in front of them.

Anne gave a little gasp. "It is old Pete," Richard murmured; "they'll never catch him. I'll tell you about him on the way down."

So as he rode beside her after that perfect hour in which the old fox played with the tumultuous pack, at his ease, monarch of his domain, unmindful of silent watchers in the shadows, Richard told her of old Pete; he told her, too, of the traditions of a ghostly fox who now and then troubled the hounds, leading them into danger and sometimes to death.

He went on with her to Bower's, and when he left her he handed her a feathery bit of pine. "I picked it on the ridge," he said. "I don't know whether you feel as I do about the scrub pines of Maryland and of Virginia; somehow they seem to belong, as you and I do, to this country."

When Anne went to her room she stuck the bit of pine in her mirror. Then in an uplifted mood she wrote to Uncle Rod. But she said little to him of Richard or of Eve. Her own feelings were too mixed in the matter to permit of a.n.a.lysis. But she told of the fox in the moonlight. "And the loveliest part of it all was that nothing happened to him. I don't think that I could have stood it to have had him killed. He was so free--and unafraid----"

The next night Anne in the long front room at Bower's told Peggy and Francois all about it. Francois' mother was sewing for Mrs. Bower, and as the distance was great, and she could not go home at night, her small son was sharing with her the hospitality which seemed to him rich and royal in comparison with the economies practised in his own small home.

It was a select company which was gathered in front of the fire.

Francois and Peggy and Anne and old Mamie, with the white house cat, Josephine, and three kittens in a basket, and Brinsley Tyson smoking his pipe in the background.

"And the old fox went t.i.t-upping and t.i.t-upping along the road in the moonlight, and Dr. Richard and I stood very still, and we saw him----"

"Last night?"

Anne nodded.

"And what did you do, Miss Anne?"

"We listened and heard the dogs----"

Little Francois clasped his hands. "Oh, were the dogs after him?"

"Yes."

"Did they get him?"

"No. He is a wise old fox. He lives up beyond the Crossroads garden. Dr.

Brooks thought when they came there to live that he would go away but he hasn't. You see, it is his home. The hunters here all know him, and they are always glad when he gets away."

Brinsley agreed. "There are so few native foxes left in the county that most of us call off the dogs before a killing--we'd soon be without sport if we didn't. An imported fox is a creature in a trap; you want the sly old natives to give you a run for your money."

Little Francois, dark-eyed and dreamy, delivered an energetic opinion. "I think it is horrid."

Peggy, less sensitive, and of the country, reproved him. "It's gentleman's sport, isn't it, Mr. Brinsley?"

"Yes. To me the dogs and horses are the best part of it. The older I grow the more I hate to kill--that's why I fish. They are cold-blooded creatures."

Peggy, leaning on his knee, demanded a fish story. "The one you told us the last time."

Brinsley's fish story was a poem written by one of the Old Gentlemen, hunting now, it was to be hoped, in happier fields. It was an idyl of the Chesapeake:

"In the Chesapeake and its tribute streams, Where broadening out to the bay they come, And the great fresh waters meet the brine, There lives a fish that is called the drum."

The drum fish and an old negro, Ned, were the actors in the drama. Ned, fishing one day in his dug-out canoe,

"Tied his line to his ankle tight, To be ready to haul if the fish should bite, And seized his fiddle----"

He played:

"But slower and slower he drew the bow, And soft grew the music sweet and low, The lids fell wearily over the eyes, The bow arm stopped and the melodies.

The last strain melted along the deep, And Ned, the old fisherman, sank to sleep.

Just then a huge drum, sent hither by fate, Caught a pa.s.sing glimpse of the tempting bait. . . .

. . . . One terrible jerk of wrath and dread From the wounded fish as away he sped With a strength by rage made double-- And into the water went old Ned.

No time for any 'last words' to be said, For the waves settled placidly over his head, And his last remark was a bubble."

The children's eyes were wide. Peggy was entranced, but Francois was not so sure that he liked it. Brinsley's hand dropped on the little lad's shoulder as he told how the two were found

"So looped and tangled together That their fate was involved in a dark mystery As to which was the catcher and which the catchee . . .

And the fishermen thought it could never be known After all their thinking and figuring, Whether the n.i.g.g.e.r a-fishing had gone, Or the fish had gone out a-n.i.g.g.e.ring."

There were defects in meter and rhythm, but Brinsley's sprightly delivery made these of minor importance, and the company had no criticism.

Francois, shivering a little, admitted that he wanted to hear it again, and climbed to Brinsley's knee. The old man with his arm about him decided that to say it over would be to spoil the charm, and that anyhow the time had come to pop the corn.

To Francois this was a new art, but when he had followed the fascinating process through all its stages until the white grains boiled up in the popper and threatened to burst the cover, his rapture knew no bounds.

"Could I do it myself, Miss Anne?" he asked, and she let him empty the snowy kernels into a big bowl, and fill the popper for a second supply.

She bent above him, showing him how to shake it steadily.

Geoffrey Fox coming in smiled at the scene. How far away it seemed from anything modern--this wide hearth-stone with the dog and the p.u.s.s.y cat--and the little children, the lovely girl and the old man--the wind blowing outside--the corn popping away like little pistols.

"May I have some?" he asked, and Anne smiled up at him, while Peggy brought little plates and set the big bowl on a stool within reach of them all.

"What brings you up, sir?" Geoffrey asked Brinsley.

"The drag-hunt and breakfast at the club. I am too stiff to follow, but David and I like to meet old friends--you see I was born in this country."

That was the beginning of a string of reminiscences to which they all listened breathlessly. The fox hunting instinct was an inheritance in this part of the country. It had its traditions and legends and Brinsley knew them all.

If any one had told Geoffrey Fox a few weeks before that he would be content to spend his time as he was spending it now, writing all day and reading the chapters at night to a serious-eyed little school-teacher who scolded him and encouraged him by turns, he would have scoffed at such an impossible prospect. Yet he was not only doing it, but was glad to be swept away from the atmosphere of somewhat sordid Bohemianism with which he had in these later years been surrounded.

And as Brinsley talked, Geoffrey watched Anne. She had Peggy in her arms.

Such women were made, he felt, to be not only the mothers of children, but the mothers of the men they loved--made for brooding tenderness--to inspire--to sympathize.

Yet with all her gentleness he knew that Anne was a strong little thing.

She would never be a clinging vine; she was rather like a rose high on a trellis--a man must reach up to draw her to him.

As she glanced up, he smiled at her, and she smiled back. Then the smile froze.

Framed in the front doorway stood Eve Chesley! She came straight to Anne and held out her hand. "I made Richard bring me down," she said. "I want to talk to you about the Crossroads ball."