Here Robelia came again, conducting "Luke" and "Rebecca." Luke's garments were amusingly, heroically patched, yet both seniors were thoroughly attractive; not handsome, but reflecting the highest, gentlest rectitude. One of their children had inherited all that was best from both parents, beautifully exalting it; the other all that was poorest in earlier ancestors. They were evolution and reversion personified.
The father was frank yet deferential. Our parley was brief. His only pomp lay in his manner of calling me madam. I felt myself a queen. Handing him a note to the stable-keeper, "You can read," I said, "can't you? Or your son can?"
"No, madam, I regrets to say we's minus dat."
I hid my pleasure. "Well, at the stable, if they seem to think this note is from a man, or that the coach is owned by a man----"
"Keep silent," put in Euonymus, "an' see de counsel o' de Lawd ovehcome."
Luke went. I pencilled another note. It requested my landlady to give Euonymus a hat, boots, and suit from my armoire and speed him back all she could. (To avoid her queries.)
Rebecca gazed anxiously after this second messenger. Robelia, near by, munched blackberries.
"Rebecca, did you ever think what you'd do if both your children were in equal danger?"
"Why, yass'm, I is studie' dat, dis ve'y day, ef de trufe got to be tol'."
Thought I: "If anything else has to be told, Robelia'll be my only helper." I asked Rebecca which one she would try to save first.
"Why, mist'ess, I could tell dat a heap sight betteh when de time come. De Lawd mowt move me to do most fo' de one what least fitt'n' to"--she choked--"to die. An' yit ag'in dat mowt depen' on de circumstances o' de time bein'."
"Well, it mustn't, Rebecca, it mustn't!"
"Y'--yass'm--no'm'm! Mustn' it?"
"No, in any case you must do as I tell you."
"Oh, o' co'se! yass'm!"
"So promise, now, that in any pinch you'll try first to save your son."
"Yass'm." A pang of duplicity showed in her uplifted glance, yet she murmured again: "Yass'm, I promise you dat." Nevertheless, I had my doubts.
A hum of voices told us my two anglers were approaching, and with Rebecca's quieting hand on the pusillanimous Robelia we drew into hiding and saw them cross the corner of a clearing and vanish again downstream. Then, hearing the coach, we went to meet it.
Both messengers were on the box. Euonymus passed me my bundle of stuff. The coach turned round. Bidding Euonymus stay on the box I had Rebecca and Robelia take the front seat inside. Following in I remarked: "Good boy, that of yours, Luke."
Luke bowed so reverently that I saw Euonymus's belief in me was not his alone. "We thaynk de Lawd," Luke replied, "fo' boy an' gal alike; de good Lawd sawnt 'em bofe."
"Yet extra thanks for the son wouldn't hurt."
Robelia buried a sob of laughter in the nearest cushion, and as we rolled away gaped at me with a face on which a dozen flies danced and played tag. And so we went----.
Chester ceased reading and stood up. For Mlle. Chapdelaine was rising. All the men rose.
"And so, also," she said, "I too must go."
"Oh, but the story is juz' big-inning," Mme. Alexandra protested, and Mme. De l'Isle said:
"I'm sure 'twill turn out magnificent, yes!"
Mademoiselle declared the tale fascinating. She "would be enchanted to stay," but her aunts must be considered, etc.; and when Chester confessed the reading would require another session anyhow Mmes. De l'Isle and Alexandre arose, and M. Castanado asked aloud if there was any of the company who could not return a week from that evening.
No one was so unlucky. "But!" cried Mme. Alexandre, "why not to my parlor?" "Because!" said Mme. Castanado, to Chester's vivid enlightenment, "every week-day, all day, you have mademoiselle with you."
"With me, ah, no! me forever down in my shop, and mademoiselle incessantly upstair'!"
Mme. Castanado prevailed. That same room, one week later.
Scipion and Dubroca escorted Mme. De l'Isle across to her beautiful gates, and Chester, not in dream but in fact, with M. De l'Isle and Mme. Alexandre following well in the rear, walked with mademoiselle to the high fence and green batten wicket of her olive-scented garden in the rue Bourbon. So walking, and urged by him, she began to tell of matters in her father's life, the old Hotel St. Louis life before hers began--matters that gave to "The Clock in the Sky" and "The Angel of the Lord" a personal interest beyond all academic values.
"We'll finish about that another time," she said, and with "another time" singing in his heart like a taut wire he verily enjoyed the rasping of the wicket's big lock as he turned away.
The week wore round. Except M. De l'Isle, kept away by a meeting of the Athénée Louisianais, all were regathered; one thing alone delayed the reading. Each of the three women had separately asked her father confessor how far one might justly--well--lie--to those seeking the truth only for cruel and wicked ends. But as no two had received the same answer, and as Chester's uncle was gone to his reward--or penalty--the question was early tabled. "Well," Mme. Castanado said: "'And so we went--' in the coach. Go on, read."
And so we went, not through the town but around it.
My attendants were heavy with sleep. Seating Rebecca next me I called Euonymus into the coach and let mother, son, and daughter slumber at ease.
To the few persons we met I paraded my bonnet and curls. Some, in Southern fashion, I questioned. I was a widow who had sold her plantation in order to go and live with a widowed brother. Euonymus too I showed off, who, waking at every halt, presented a face that seemed any boy's rather than a runaway's. So natural to these Africans was the supernatural that I could be one of the men who plucked Lot from Sodom and yet a becurled widow.
When at noon, at a farmhouse, we had fed horses and dined, I at the planter's board, my "slaves" under the house-grove trees, Euonymus took the lines, and for five hours Luke slept inside. Then they changed places again, and Euonymus and I, face to face, watched the long hot day wane, and pass through gorgeous changes into twilight. Often I saw questions in the young eyes that watched me so reverently, but I dared not encourage them; dared not be a talkative angel. Also my brain had its questions. How was I to get out of the most perilous trap into which a sane man--if sane I was--ever thrust himself? There was no sign that we were being pursued, but it was a harrowing puzzle how, without drawing suspicion upon the runaways, to get them once more separated from me and the coach while I should vanish as a lady and reappear as a gentleman.
"Euonymus, boy, if I should by and by dress as a man could you put these woman things on, over what you're wearing, and be a lady in my place?"
"Why, eh, y'--yass'm. Oh, yass'm, ef you say so, my--mistress; howsomever, you know what de good book say' 'bout de Ethiopium."
"Can't change--yes, I know; but this would be only for an hour or two and in the dark."
"It'd have to be pow'ful dahk," sighed Euonymus, and from Robelia's sunbonnet came--"Unh!"
Rebecca interposed: "An' still, o' co'se, we all gwine do ezac'ly what you say."
"Well," I responded, "maybe we won't do that." And we never did. I was still "Mrs. Southmayd," as we came into a small railway station. At the ticket-window I asked if any one had come up in the train of half an hour before, inquiring for a lady in a coach.
"No, ma'am, nobody got off that train. But there's another train at half past eight."
"Oh," I whined, "he won't come on that; he's overrated my speed and gone on to the next station, making five miles more going for me!"
"Why, no, you can give three of your servants a pass to go on with the carriage, keep your maid and wait for the train."
"Ah, no! No lady can choose to travel by rail where she can go in her own coach!"
They said no more except to warn Luke of a bad piece of road about two miles on. Sure enough, in its very middle--crack!--we broke down. "De kingbolt done gone clean in two!" said Luke, and Robelia repeated the news explosively.
"We'll leave the coach," I announced. "Fold the lap-robes on the backs of the two horses, for Rebecca and me. You-all can walk beside us."
After a while, so going, we passed a large plantation house, its windows ruddy with home cheer. A second quarter-mile brought dimly to view a railroad water-tank and an empty flag-station house, and in the next bit of woods I spoke to Euonymus: "Have you that bundle? Ah, yes. Luke, this boy and I are going off here a step for me to change my dress. If any passer questions you, say I'll be right back."
"Yass, madam, but, er, eh--wouldn' you sooner take yo' maid, Robelia, instid?"
"No, for as to dress I'll be as much of a man, when I get back, as Euonymus."
"Is Euonymus gwine change dress too?"
"No, these things that I take off, your wife and Robelia may divide between them."
I started away but Luke lifted a hand. I thought he was going to claim every dud for Robelia. Not so.
"We all thanks you mighty much, madam, but in fac', ef de trufe got to be tol'----"
"It hasn't got to be told me, Luke, if I----"
"Oh, no, madam, o' co'se. I 'uz on'y gwine say--a-concernin' Euonymus----"
I hurried off while the wife chided her good man: "Why don't you dess hide all dem thing' in yo' heart like dey used to do when d' angel 'pear' unto dem?"
Alone with Euonymus, as I whipped off my feminine garb and whirled into the other, I began to say that however suddenly I might leave the fugitives they must rest assured that I was not deserting them. To which----
"Oh, my Lawd," Euonymus replied, "us know dat!"
We reached the pike again. "Rebecca, dismount. Hand me your bridle. Luke, for you-all's better safety I'm going back and return these horses. We may not see one another again----"
"Oh, Lawdy, Lawdy!" moaned Rebecca.
"In dis vain worl' you mean," Luke said.
"That's all. Come, don't waste time. You'd better walk on for a short way in the pike before taking to the woods. Now go all night for all you're worth. Good-by." I turned abruptly. But my led horse was averse to abruptness, and all the family except the torpid Robelia poured up their blessings and rained kisses on my very feet.
In my half-intelligent plan I intended first to stop at the house we had gone by, and had reached the gate of its front lane when I met one of its household, a lad of sixteen, on the pike.
"Yes, he had just seen the disabled coach."
I said that by business appointment with the lady who had just left the coach I had gone to the next railway station northward in order to meet her. That I had come down the turnpike on a hired horse and met her and her servants pushing forward to our appointment as best they could. Now, I said, our business, a law matter, was accomplished and she was gone on on my hired horse. This span I was taking back to the stable whence I had hired them for her in the morning.
The boy's graciousness shamed me through and through. "Why, certainly! He would have the coach drawn up to the house before sunrise and would keep it as long as I liked." He asked me in, but I went on to the little railway town, repeated my tarradiddle at its "hotel," and soon was asleep.
["'Tarradi'l','" said Mme. Castanado, "tha'z may be a species of paternoster, I suppose, eh?"
"No," said Scipion, "I think tha'z juz' a fashion of speech that he took a drink. I do that myself, going to bed."
Chester explained, but said that to admit one's untruthfulness by even a nickname implied some compunction. Whereat two or three put in:
"Ah! if he acknowledge' his compunction he's all right! But we are stopping the story."
It went on.]
I was awakened, after the breakfast hour, by a tap on my door. Why it gave me consternation I could not have told; I dare say my inveracities of the day before had failed to digest. "Come in," I called, and in stepped my two fishermen.
Their good mornings were pleasant, but, "Fact is," said one, "we're bothered about your client."
"The lady who passed through here last evening?"
"Yes, it looks as though----"
"Go on while I dress. Looks as though--what?"
"As though she wa'n't what you thought, or else----"
I smiled aggressively: "Pardon, I know that lady. 'Or else,' you say? What else? Go on."
"Oh, you go on dressing. Do you know them darkies are hers?"
"Hoh! Are your teeth yours? Why do you ask?"
He handed me a newspaper clipping:
Two Hundred Dollars Reward. Ran away from my plantation in ---- county of this State, on the ------ day of ------ the following named and described slaves; father, mother, daughter, and son: . . . A reward of fifty dollars will be paid to any person for the capture and imprisonment in any jail, of each or either of the above named. Etc.
With a laugh I returned the thing and went on dressing. "It doesn't," I said aloud to my busy image in the mirror, "describe my client's darkies at all." I faced round: "Why, gentlemen, if this isn't the most astonishing----"
"Ho-old on. Ho-old on! Finish your dressing. We're told it does describe two of them and we thought we'd just come and see for ourselves."
"And you followed the unprotected lady?"
"We followed four runaway niggers, sir! Else why did they take to the woods inside of a mile from that house where you left the coach? Oh, you're dressed; come along; time's flying!"
Determined to waste all the time I could, "Wait," I said, strapping on my pistol. "Now, gentlemen, we'll follow this matter to the end, beginning now, instantly. But it must be done as----"
"Oh, as privately as possible! Certainly!"
"Certainly. You want the reward and you want it all. But understand, I know you're in error, and I go with you solely to prove you are. Now, by your theory----"
"Oh, come along!" We went. I killed time over my coffee, and in getting a saddle for one of my hired span. "You must excuse us if we're not polite," my friends apologized after another flash of impatience. "Of course those niggers are not on the run in broad day, but their trail's getting cold!"
"You're not as bad-mannered as I am," I laughed as we mounted, but their allusion to hounds made me enjoy the burden of my six-shooter.
As we ambled off, "What were you going to say," one asked me, "about our 'theory,' or something?"
"Oh! I see you think Mrs. Southmayd must have met up with company and left her servants to follow on to the next station alone."
"Exactly. We tracked the darkies along the edge of the road; but her horse tracks--we could only see that no horse tracks left the road where any of their man tracks left it."
When we had gone a mile or so one of the boys turned to leave us by a neighborhood road, saying: "I'll rejoin you, 'cross fields, where you turned back last night. I'm going for the dogs."
"Stop! Gentlemen, this is too high-handed. Do you reckon I'll let you run down those four innocent creatures with hounds? I swear you shan't do it, sirs."
"See here," said the one still with me, "come on. We'll show you the very spots where those innocents left the road one by one, and if you don't say they've used every trick known to a nigger to kill their trail, we'll just quit and go home. Does that suit you?"
"Not by a long chalk!" I retorted as I moved with him up the pike. "Those poor simpletons--alone in a strange land, maybe without a pass, at any moment liable to meet a patrol--how easy for them to make the fatal mistake of leaving the road and hiding their tracks!"
"All right, come ahead, you'll see fair play."
We passed the scene of the breakdown and then the house to which the coach had been drawn. I saw the coach in a stable door. By and by a turn in the pike revealed the other clerk and a tall, slim horseman just dismounting among four lop-eared, black-and-brown dogs coupled two and two by light steel breast-yokes. With a heavy whip and without a frown this man gave one of them a quick cut over the face as the brute ventured to lift a voice as hollow and melodious as a bell.
"He's a puppy I'm breaking in," said the man. "Now here, you see"--he pointed to the middle of the road--"is where you, sir, met up with the madam and her niggers, and given her yo' hoss and taken her span. Here's the tracks o' the span, you takin' 'em back; you can see they're the same as these comin' this way. T'other critter's tracks I don't make out, but no matter, here's the niggers' along here--and here, see? and here--here--there." We rode for ten minutes or so. Then halting again:
"Look yonder in that lock o' fence. There's where one went over into the brush."
Beyond the high worm fence grew a stubborn tangle of briers, vines, and cane. "Mind you," I began to call after the nigger-chaser, but one of my companions spoke for me:
"Mr. Hardy, we got to be dead sure they're runaways before we put the dogs on."
"No, we ain't," Hardy called through the back of his head. "Dandy and Charmer'll tell us if they're not, before we've gone three hundred yards, and I can call 'em off so quick it'll turn 'em a somerset." He dismounted, and, while unyoking the two older hounds, spoke softly a few words of gusto that put them into a dumb ecstasy. One of the boys pressed his horse up to mine.
"There's the place," he said. "Now watch the dogs find it."
As the pair sprang from Hardy's hands one began to nose the air, the other the earth, to left, to right, and to cross each other's short, swift circuits. With stony face while assuming a voice of wildest eagerness he cried in searching whispers: "Niggeh thah, Dandy! Niggeh thah, Charmer! Take him, my lady!"
Skimming the ground with hungry noses, the dogs answered each cry with a single keen yap of preoccupied affirmation. Almost at once Charmer came to the spot pointed out to me, reared her full length upon the rails and let out a new note; long, musical, fretful, overjoyed. Hardy mounted breast-high to the fence's top, wreathed two fingers in the willing brute's collar, lifted her, and dropped her on the other side. There she instantly resumed her search.
At the same time her yoke-mate's deep bay pealed like a trumpet, from a few yards up the roadway. He had struck the broad, frank trail of the other three negroes. The "puppy," still in leash, replied in a note hardly less deep and mellow, but the whip of cool discipline cut him off. From an ox-horn the master blew a short, sharp recall and at once Dandy returned and began his work over, knowing now which runaway to single out. Hardy remained on the fence, watching his favorite, over in the brush. By a stir of the bushes, now here, now there, we could see how busy she was, and every now and then she sent us, as if begging our patience, her eager promissory yelp.
Suddenly her master had a new thought. He stepped onward to the next lock of the fence, scrutinized its top rail, moved to, the next lock, examining the top rail there, then to the next, the next, the next, and at the seventh or eighth beckoned us.
"See, here?" he asked. "Think that ain't a runaway nigger? Look." A splinter had been newly rubbed off the rail. "What you reckon done that, sir; a bird or a fish? That's where he jumped. Look yonder, where he landed and lit out."
The merest fraction of a note from the horn brought the two free dogs to their master, and before he could lift Dandy over the fence Charmer was on the trail. She threw her head high and for the first time filled the resounding timber with the music of her bay.
["Mr. Chester," murmured Mlle. Chapdelaine, and once more he ceased to read. Mme. Castanado had laid her hands tightly to her face. Yet now she smilingly dropped them, saying: "Seraphine--Marcel--please to pazz around that cake an' wine. Well, I su'pose there are yet in the worl'--in Afrique--Asia--even Europe--several kin' of cuztom mo' wicked than that. And still I'm sorry that ever tranzpire. But, Mr. Chezter, if you'll resume?"
Chester once more resumed.]
Hardy's incitements were no longer whispers.
"Dandy! Dandy!" he cried, with wild elation of voice and still no emotion in his face. "Niggeh-fellah thah. Dandy! Ah, Dandy! look him out!"
The music swelled from Dandy's throat. Away went the pair. The younger couple, in yoke, trembled and moaned to be after them. The two clerks had swung down three or four rails from the fence, and with Hardy were hurrying their horses through, when the youngest dog, nose to the ground and tugging his yokemate along, let go a cry of discovery and began to dig furiously under a bottom rail. His master threw him off and drew from under it "Mrs. Southmayd's" tiny beflowered bonnet.
"Good God!" exclaimed one of the boys as he held it up, "they've made way with her!"
"Now, none of that nonsense!" I cried; "she's given it to one of them and they've feared 'twould get them into trouble!" But the three had spurred off and I could only toss it away and follow.
The baying had ceased and an occasional half-smothered yap told that the scent was broken. A huge grape-vine end, hanging from a lofty bough, had enabled the run-away to take a long sidewise swing clear of the ground; but as I came up the brutes had recovered the trail and sped on, once more breaking the still air, far and wide, into deep waves of splendid sound. Close after them, as best they might in yoke, scuttled the younger pair, dragging each other this way and that, their broad ears trailing to their feet, and Hardy riding close behind them, reciting their pedigrees and their distinguishing whims.
Presently we issued from the woods, at the edge of wide fields surrounding a plantation-house and slave-quarters, and I hoped to find the trail broken again; but without a pause the chase turned along a line of fence as if to half encircle the plantation. The master of the hounds, in nervy yet placid words, explained that a runaway knew better than to cross open ground by night and set the house-dogs a-barking. It was only on seeing no workers in the fields that I remembered it was Sunday, and feared intensely that the pious fugitives might have shortened their flight.
From the plantation's farther bound we ran down a long, gentle slope of beautiful open woods. At the bottom of it a clear stream rippled between steep banks shrouded with strong vines. Here the scent had failed and it was wonderful to see the docile faith and intelligence with which the dogs resigned the whole work to their master, and followed beside him while he sought a crossing-place for his horse. This took many minutes, but by and by they scrambled over, he bidding us wait where we were until the dogs should open again; and as he started down-stream along the farther bank the older hounds, at a single word, ran circling out before him in the tangle, electrified by the steel-cold eagerness of his implorings.
But now, to my joy, he found their hungry snufflings as futile as his own scrutinizings and divinations, and after following the stream until my companions fretted openly at the delay, he dropped a note from his horn, rode back with the four dogs, recrossed, and passed down on our side with them at his heels, frowning at last and scanning the tangled growth of the opposite bank.
And now again he came back: "You see, this stream runs so nigh the way they wanted to go that there's no tellin' how fur they waded down it or whether they was two, three, or four of 'em rej'ined together. They're shore to 'a' been all together when they left it, but where that was hell only knows. Come on."
We plunged across after him and followed down the farther bank, and at the point where he had turned back he put the hounds on again. "How do you know there were more than one here?" I asked.
"Because, if noth'n' else, this trail at first was a fool's trail and now it's as smart as cats a-fight'n'--look 'em out, Dandy! Every time the rascals struck a swimmin'-hole they swum it, the men sort o' tote'n' the women, I reckon--ah, my Charmer! Yes, my sweet lady! take 'em! take 'em!"
As the stream emerged into an old field--"Sun's pow'ful hot for you-all!" Hardy added. "Ain't see' such a day this time o' year fo' a coon's age. Hosses feel'n' it. Hard to say which is hottest, sun or brush."
We had skirted the branch a full mile, beating its margin thoroughly, and were in deep woods again, when all at once Charmer let out a glad peal. Her mate echoed it and with the stream at their back they were off and away in full cry. The trail was broad and strong and with rare breaks continued so for an hour. Often the dogs made us trot; in open grounds we galloped. Once, in a thickety wet tract where the still air was suffocating and a sluggish runlet meandered widely, Hardy was forced, after long hinderance, to drop the trail and recover it on a rising ground beyond.
There once more we were making good speed when we burst into an open grove where about a small, unpainted frame church a saddle-horse was tied under every swinging limb. Before the church a gang of boys had sprung up from their whittling to be our gleeful spectators. Hardy waved them off with the assurance that we wanted neither their help nor company, and though the trail took us at slackened speed around two sides of the building we passed and were gone while the worshippers were in the first stanza of a hymn started to keep them on their benches.
Noon, afternoon; we made no pause. "It's ketch 'em before night," said Hardy as we bent low under beech boughs, "or not till noon to-morrow."
About mid-afternoon one of the court-house boys, who had been talking softly with the other, turned back with a bare good-by. His friend explained:
"Got to be at his desk early in the morning. But I'm with you till you run 'em down."
Happy for me that he was mistaken. Two hours more were hardly gone when, "My Prince is sick!" he cried, drew in, and under a smoke of his own curses began wildly to unsaddle. Hardy rode on.
"You'll have to get another mount," I said.
"Another hell! I wouldn't leave this horse sick in strange hands for a thousand dollars!" Suddenly he struck an imploring key: "Look here! I'll give you fifty dollars cash to stay with me till I get him out o' this!"
"Five hundred," I called, trotting after Hardy, "wouldn't hire me."
Till I was out of earshot I could hear him damning and cursing me in snorts and shouts as a sneak who would wear my coat of tar and feathers yet, and I was still wondering whether I ought to or not, when I overhauled the nigger-chaser cheering on his dogs. Their prey had again tricked them, and again the cry was, "Take him, Dandy!" and "Hi, Charmer, hi!"
Between shouts: "Is yo' nag gwine to hold out?"
"He's got to or perish," I laughed.
In time we found ourselves under a vast roof of towering pines. The high green grass beneath them had been burned over within a year. The declining sun gilded both the grass and the lower sides of the soaring boughs. Even Hardy glanced back exaltedly to bid me mark the beauty of the scene. But I dared not. The dogs were going more swiftly than ever, and there was a ticklish chance of one's horse breaking a leg in one of the many holes left by burnt-out pine roots. The main risk, moreover, was not to Hardy's trained hunter but to my worn-out livery "nag."
"We've started 'em, all four, on the run," he called, "but if we don't tree 'em befo' they make the river we'll lose 'em after all."
The land began a steady descent. Soon once more we were in underbrush and presently came square against a staked-and-ridered worm fence around a "deadening" dense with tall corn. Charmer and Dandy had climbed directly over it, scampered through the corn, and were waking every echo in a swamp beyond. The younger pair, still yoked, stood under the fence, yelping for Hardy's aid. He sprang down and unyoked them and over they scrambled and were gone, ringing like fire-bells. Outside the fence, both right and left, the ground was miry, yet for us it was best to struggle round through the bushy slough; which we had barely done when with sudden curses Hardy spurred forward. The younger dogs were off on a separate chase of their own. For at the river-bank the four negroes had divided by couples and gone opposite ways.
"Call them back!" I urged. "Blow your horn!" But I was ignored.
[Chester sat looking at a newly turned page as though it were illegible.
"I'm wondering," he lightly said, "what public enormity of to-day the next generation will be as amazed at as we are at this."
"Ah," Mme. Castanado responded, "never mine! Tha'z but the moral! Aline and me we are insane for the story to finizh!" And the story was resumed, to suffer no further interruption.]
At the river we burst out upon a broad, gentle bend up and down which we could see both heavily wooded banks for a good furlong either way.
The sun's last beams shone straight up the lower arm of the bend. On the upper bayed Charmer and Dandy, unseen. On the lower we heard the younger pair. On the upper we saw only the clear waters crinkling in a wide shallow over a gravel-bar, but down-stream we instantly discovered Luke and his wife. Silhouetted against the level sunlight, heaving forward with arms upthrown, waist deep in the main current, they were more than half-way across. At that moment two small dark objects, the two dogs, moved out from the shore, after them, each with its wake of two long silvery ripples. The "puppy" was leading.
With a curse their master threw the horn to his lips and blew an imperious note. The rear dog turned his head and would have reversed his course, but seeing his leader keep on he kept on with him. Again the angry horn re-echoed, and the rear dog promptly turned back though the other swam on.
Rebecca threw a look behind and it was pitiful to hear her outcry of despair and terror. But Luke faced about and, backing after her through the flood, prepared to meet the hound naked-handed. Hardy sprang to his tiptoes in the stirrups, his curses pealing across the water. "If you hurt that dog," he yelled, "I'll shoot you dead!"
Up-stream the other two runaways were out on the gravel-bar, Euonymus behind Robelia and Robelia splashing ludicrously across the shoal, tearing off and kicking off--in preparation for deep water--sunbonnet, skirt, waist, petticoat, and howling in the self-concern of abject cowardice.
"Thank heaven, she's a swimmer," thought I, "and won't drown her brother!" For only a swimmer ever cast off garments that way.
The flight of Euonymus, too, was bare-headed and swift, but it was unfrenzied and silent. Neither of them saw Luke or Rebecca; the sun was in their eyes and at that instant Charmer and Dandy, having met some momentary delay, once more bayed joyously and sprang into view. Like Luke, Euonymus faced the brutes. With another fierce outcry Hardy blew his recall of all the four dogs.
Three turned at once but the youngster launched himself at Luke's throat where he stood breast-high in the glassing current. The slave caught the dog's whole windpipe in both hands and went with him under the flood. Hardy's supreme care for Charmer had lost him the strategic moment, but he fired straight at Rebecca.
She did not fall and his weapon flew up for a second shot! but by some sheer luck I knocked the pistol spinning yards away into the river. While it spun I saw other things: Rebecca clasping a wounded arm; Luke and the dog reappearing apart, the dog about to repeat his onset; and Hardy dumb with rage.
"Call the puppy!" I cried, "you'll save him yet."
The master winded his horn, and the dog swam our way. At the same time his fellows came about us, while on the farther bank Luke helped his wife writhe up through the waterside vines, and with her disappeared. Only Euonymus remained in the water, at the far edge of the gravel-bar.
I was so happy that I laughed. "All right," I cried, "I'll pay for the revolver."
Foul epithets were Hardy's reply while he spurred madly to and fro in search of an opening in the vines to let his horse down into the stream. I rode with him, knee to knee. "You'll pay for this with your life !" he yelled down my throat. "I'll kill you, so help me God! Charmer! Dandy! go, take the nigger!"
The whole baying pack darted off for Euonymus's crossing. "Take the nigger, Charmer! Ah! take him, my lady!" We saw that Euonymus could not swim. Still knee to knee with Hardy, I drew and fired. "Puppy's" mate yelped and rolled over, dead.
"Call them back," I said, holding my weapon high; but Hardy only shrieked curses and cried:
"Take the nigger, Charmer, take him!"
I fired again. Poor Dandy! He sprang aside howling piteously, with melting eyes on his master.
"Oh, God!" cried Hardy, leaping down beside the wailing dog, that pushed its head into his bosom like a sick child. "Oh, God, but you shall die for this!"
He was half right but so was I and I checked up barely enough to cry back: "Call 'em off! Call 'em off or I'll shoot Charmer!"
With Dandy clasped close and with eyes streaming he blew the recall. Looking for its effect, I saw Euonymus trying to swim and Charmer quitting the chase. But the young dog kept on. The current was carrying Euonymus away. Twice through vines and brush, while I cried: "Catch the fallen tree below you! Catch the tree!" I tried to spur my horse down into the stream, and on the third trial I succeeded.
The flood had cut the bank from under a great buttonwood. It hung prone over the water, and one dipping fork seized and held the fainting swimmer. The dog was close, but had entered the current too far down and was breasting it while he bayed in protest to his master's horn. Now, as Euonymus struggled along the tree the brute struck for the bank, and the two gained it together. Euonymus ran, but on a bit of open grass dropped to one knee, at bay. The dog sprang. In the negro fashion the runaway's head ducked forward to receive the onset, while both hands clutched the brute's throat. Not dreaming that they would keep their hold till I could get there, I leaped down in the shoal to fire; but the grip held, though the dog's teeth sank into legs and arms, and all at once Euonymus straightened to full stature, lifting the dog till his hind legs could but just tiptoe the ground.
"Right!" I cried; "bully, my boy! Lift him one inch higher and he's whipped!"
But Euonymus could barely hold him off from face and throat.
"Turn him broadside to me!" I shouted, having come into water breast-deep. "Let me put a hole through him!"
But the fugitive's only response was: "Run, Robelia! 'Ever mind me! Run! Run!"
And here came Hardy across the gravel-bar, in the saddle. I aimed at him: "Stand, sir! Stand!"
He hauled in and lifted the horn. Euonymus had heaved the dog from his feet. The horn rang, and with a howl of terror the brute writhed free, leaped into the river and swam toward his master. I sprang on my horse and took the deep water: "Wait, boy! Wait!"
It was hard getting ashore. When I reached the spot of grass I found only the front half of the runaway's hickory shirt, in bloody rags. I spurred to a gap in the bushes, and there, face down, lay Euonymus, insensible. I knelt and turned the slender form; and then I whipped off my coat and laid it over the still, black bosom. For Euonymus was a girl.
Her eyelids quivered, opened. For a moment the orbs were vacant, but as she drew a deep breath she saw me. Her shapely hand sought her throat-button, and finding my coat instead she turned once more to the sod, moaning, "Brother! Mingo!"
"Is he Robelia?" I asked. "Come, we'll find him."
Clutching my coat to her breast, she staggered up. I helped her put the coat on and sprang into the saddle. "Now mount behind me," I said, reaching for her hand; but with an anguished look:
"Whah Mingo?" she asked. "Is dey kotch Mingo?"
"No, not yet. Your hand--now spring!"
She landed firmly and we sped into the woods.
My merely wounding Dandy was fortunate. It kept Hardy from following me hotfooted or rousing the neighborhood. I dare say he wanted no one but himself to have the joy of killing me.
At a "store" and telegraph-station I let my charge down into a wild plum-patch, bought a hickory shirt, left my half-dead beast, telegraphed my livery-stable client where to find him, and so avoided the complication of being a horse-thief. Then I recovered Euonymus and about ten that night the five of us met on the bank of a creek. Near its farther shore, on a lonely railroad siding, we found a waiting freight-train and stole into one of its empty cars; and when at close of the next day hunger drove us out our pursuers were beating the bush a hundred miles behind.
Fed from a negro-cabin and guided by the stars, we fled all of another night afoot, and on the following day lost Mingo. At broad noon, with an overseer and his gang close by in a corn-field, the seductions of a melon-patch overcame him and he howled away his freedom in the jaws of a bear-trap. His father and mother wept dumb tears and laid their faces to the ground in prayer. Euonymus was frantic. With all her superior sanity, she would not have left the region could she have persuaded us to go on without her.
Well! Day by day we lay in the brush, and night after night fled on. I could tell much about the sweet, droll piety of my three fellow runaways, and the humble generosity of their hearts. No ancient Israelite ever looked forward to the coming of a political Messiah with more pious confidence than they to a day when their whole dark race should be free and enjoy every right that any other race enjoys.
"Even a right to cross two races?" I once asked Luke, smilingly, though with intense aversion.
"No, suh; no, suh! De same Lawd what give' ev'y man a wuck he cayn't do ef he ain't dat man, give' ev'y ra-ace a wuck dey cayn't do ef dey ain't dat ra-ace." I fancy he had been years revolving that into a formula; or--he may have merely heard some master or mistress say it.
"Still," I suggested, "races have crossed, and made new and better ones."
"I don't 'spute dat, suh; no, suh. But de Lawd ain't neveh gwine to make a betteh ra-ace by cross'n' one what done-done e'en-a' most all what even yit been done, on to anotheh what, eh----"
Sidney (Onesimus) put in: "What ain't neveh yit done noth'n'!" And her mother sighed, "Amen!"
"Yes?" inquired Mme. Castanado. "Well?"
"Ah, surely!" cried several, "Tha'z not all?"
Mme. De l'Isle appealed to her husband: "Even two, three hun'red mile', that din'n' bring the line of Canada, I think."
"No, but, I suppose, of the Ohio."
"And that undergroun' railway!" said Scipion.
"Yes," Mme. Alexandre agreed, "but that story remain' unfinizh' whiles that uncle of Mr. Chezter couldn' return at his home."
"Not even his State," ventured mademoiselle.
"But he did," Chester said; "he came back."
M. Dubroca spoke up: "Oh, 'tis easy to insert that, at the en'--foot-note."
"And Hardy?" asked Beloiseau, "him and yo' uncle, they di'n' shoot either the other?"
"I believe they did, each the other. I never quite understood the hints I got of it, till now. I know that six months in bed with a back full of somebody's buckshot saved my uncle's life."
"From lynching! That also muz' be insert'!"
Chester thought not. "No, centre the interest in the runaway family, as in mademoiselle's 'Clock in the Sky.'" And so all agreed.
A second time he walked home with mademoiselle, under the same lenient escort as before. One thus occupied, by moonlight, can moralize as he cannot with any larger number. "It's hard enough at best," he said, "for us, in our pride of race, to sympathize--seriously--in the joys, the hopes, the sufferings of souls under dark skins yet as human as ours if not as white."
"Yes, 'tis true. Only one man, Mr. Chester, I ever knew, myself, who did that."
"Your father?"
"Yes, my dear father."
"Will you not some day tell me his story?"
"Mr. Castanado will tell you it. Any of those will tell you."
"I can't question them about you, and besides----"
"Well, here is my gate. 'And besides--' what?"
"Besides, why can't you tell me?"
"Ah, I'll do that--'some day,' as you say."
The gate-key went into the lock.
"But, mademoiselle, our 'Clock in the Sky'--our 'Angel of the Lord'--shan't we join them?"
"Ah, they are already one, but you have yet to hear that first manuscript, and that is so very separate--as you will see."
"Isn't it also a story of dark skins?"
"Ah, but barely at all of souls under them; those souls we find it so hard to remember."
"Chère fille"--M. De l'Isle had come up, with Mme. Alexandre--"the three will go gran'ly together! Not I al-lone perceive that, but Scipion also--Castanado--Dubroca. Mr. Chester, my dear sir, the pewblication of that book going to be heard roun' the worl'! Tha'z going produse an epoch, that book; yet same time--a bes'-seller!"
Mademoiselle beamed. "Does Mr. Chester think 'twill be that? A best-seller?"
Chester couldn't prophesy that of any book. "They say not even a publisher can tell."
"Hah!" monsieur cried, "those cunning pewblisher'! they pref-er not to tell."
"Some poetry," Chester continued, urged by mademoiselle's eyes, "doesn't pay the poets over a few thousand a year--per volume; while some novels pay their authors--well--fortunes."
"That they go," madame broke in, "and buy some palaces in Italie! And tha'z but the biginning; you have not count' the dramatization--hundreds the week! and those movie'--the same! and those tranzlation'!"
"Well, I think we will be satisfied, Mr. Chester, with the tenth of that, eh?"
Chester's reply was drowned in monsieur's: "No, my child! But nine-tenth' maybe, yes! No-no-no! if those pewblisher' find out you are satisfi' by one-tenth, one-tenth is all you'll ever see!"
"Ah," said mademoiselle to madame, "even the one-tenth I mustn't tell to my aunts. They wouldn't sleep to-night. And myself--'publication, dramatization, movies, translation'--I believe I'll lie awake till daylight, making that into a song--a hymn!"
A wonderful sight she was, pausing in the open gate, with the little high-fenced garden at her back, a street-lamp lighting her face. Chester harked back to that first manuscript. It "ought not to wait another week," he declared.
"No," monsieur said, "and since we all have read that egcept only you."
Chester looked to mademoiselle: "Then I suppose I might read it with the Castanados alone."
"No," madame put in, "you see, you can't riturn at Castanado's immediately to-morrow or next day. That next day, tha'z Sunday, but you don't know if madame goin' to have the stren'th for that fati-gue. Yet same time you can't wait forever! And bisside', yo' Aunt Corinne, Aunt Yvonne--Mr. Chezter he's never have that lugsury to meet them, and that will be a very choice o'casion for Mr. Chezter to do that, if----"
"If he'll take the pains," the niece broke in, "to call Sunday afternoon. Then I'll have the manuscript back from Mr. Castanado and we'll read it to my Aunt Corinne and my Aunt Yvonne, all four together in the garden."
"Yes, yet not in this li'l' garden in the front, but in the large, far back from the house, in the h-arbor of 'oneysuckle and by the side of the li'l' lake, eh?" So prompted madame.
"Assuredly," said the smiling girl; "not in the front, where is no room for a place to sit down!"
Chester's acceptance was eager. Then once more the batten gate closed and the key grated between him and Aline--marvellous, marvellous Aline Chapdelaine.