The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush. Lynde Francis

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      Blount made a quick dive for his card-case, found it, and hastened to introduce himself by name. She took the bit of pasteboard, and, since she scarcely glanced at the engraved line on it, he found himself wholly unable to interpret her smile.

      "The card is hardly necessary," she said; and then, to his complete bewilderment: "You are very much like your father, Mr. Blount."

      "You know my father?" he exclaimed.

      She laughed softly. "Every one knows the senator," she returned, "and I can assure you that his son is heartily welcome under this roof. Uncle Barnabas"—to the ancient serving-man who was still hovering in the background—"have Mr. Blount's horse put up and the blue room made ready."

      Blount followed his still unnamed hostess obediently when she led the way to the lighted library

      in the wing of the great house.

      "Uncle Barnabas will come for you in a little while," she told him, playing the part of the gracious lady to the line and letter. "In the meantime you must let me make you a cup of tea. I am sure you must be needing it after having ridden so far. Take the easy-chair, and we can talk comfortably while the kettle is boiling. Are you new to the West, Mr. Blount, or is this only a return to your own? The senator is always talking about you, you know; but he is so inordinately proud of you that he forgets to tell us all the really interesting things that we want to know."

      The serving-man took his own time about coming back; so long a time that Blount forgot that it was past midnight, that he was a guest in a strange house, and that he still had not learned the name of his entertainer. For all this forgetfulness the little lady with the dark-brown eyes was directly responsible. Almost before he realized it, Blount found himself chatting with her as if he had always known her, making rapid strides on the way to confidence and finding her alertly responsive in whatever field the talk happened to fall. Apparently she knew the world—his world—better than he knew it himself: she had summered on the North Shore and wintered in Washington. She knew Paris, and when the conversation touched upon the Italian art-galleries he was led to wonder if he had gone through Italy with his eyes shut. At the next turn of the talk he was forced to admit that not even Patricia herself could speak more intelligently of the English social problem; and when it came to the vital questions of the American moment he gasped again and wondered if he were awake—if it could be possible that this out-of-place Georgian mansion and its charming mistress could be part and parcel of the West which had so far outgrown the boyhood memories.

      Since all things mundane must have an end, the old butler with the white-fringed head came at last to show him the way to his luxurious lodgings on the second floor of the mansion. With a touch of hospitality which carried Blount back to his one winter in the South, the hostess went with him as far as the stair-foot, and her "Good-night" was still ringing musically in his ears when the old negro lighted the candles in the guest-room, put another stick of wood on the small fire that was crackling and snapping cheerfully on the hearth, and bobbed and bowed his way to the door. Blount saw his last chance for better information vanishing for the night, and once more broke with the traditions.

      "Uncle Barnabas, before you go, suppose you tell me where I am," he suggested. "Whose house is this?"

      The old man stopped on the threshold, chuckling gleefully. "A-ain't you know dat, sah?—a-ain't de mistis done tell you dat? You's at Wa'trace Hall—Mahsteh Majah's new country-house; yes, sah; dat's whah you is—kee-hee!"

      "And who is 'Master Major'?" pressed Blount, whose bewilderment grew with every fresh attempt to dispel it.

      "A-ain't she tell you dat?—kee-hee! Ev'body knows Mahsteh Majah; yes, sah. If de mistis ain't tell you, ol' Barnabas ain't gwine to—no, sah. Ah'll bring yo'-all's coffee in de mawnin'; yes, sah—good-night, sah—kee-hee!" And the door closed silently upon the wrinkled old face and the bobbing head.

      Having nothing else to do, Blount went to bed, but sleep came reluctantly. Life is said to be full of paper walls thinly dividing the commonplace from the amazing; and he decided that he had surely burst through one of them when he had given place to the vagrant impulse prompting him to go horseback-riding when he should have gone comfortably to bed in his sleeper to wait for the track-clearing.

      Whither had a curiously bizarre fate led him? Where was "Wartrace Hall," and who was "Mahsteh Majah"? Who was the winsome little lady who looked as if she might be twenty, and had all the wit and wisdom of the ages at her tongue's end—who had held him so nearly spellbound over the teacups that he had entirely lost sight of everything but his hospitable welcome?

      These and kindred speculations kept him awake for a long time after the door had closed behind the ancient negro; and he was just dropping off into his first loss of consciousness when the familiar purring of a motor-car aroused him. There was a window at his bed's head, and he reached over and drew the curtain. The view gave upon the avenue of cottonwoods and the circular carriage approach. A touring-car, with its powerful head-lights paling the white radiance of the moon, was drawn up at the steps, and he had a glimpse of a big man, swathed from head to heel in a dust-coat, descending from the tonneau.

      "I suppose that will be 'Mahsteh Majah,'" he mused sleepily. "That's why the little lady was sitting up so late—she was waiting for him." Then to the thronging queries threatening to return and keep him awake: "Scat!—go away! call it a pipe-dream and let me go to sleep!"

V

       Table of Contents

AT WARTRACE HALL

       Table of Contents

      In his most imaginative moments, Evan Blount had never prefigured a home-coming to coincide in any detail of it with the reality.

      When he opened his eyes on the morning following the night of singular adventures, the sun was shining brightly in at the bed's-head window, a cheerful fire was blazing on the hearth, and his father, a little heavier, a little grayer, but with the same ruggedly strong face and kindly eyes, was standing at his bedside.

      "Father!"—and "Evan, boy!" were the simple words of greeting; but the mighty hand-grip which went with them was for the younger man a confirmation of the filial hope and a heart-warming promise for the future. Following instantly, there came a rush of mingled emotions: of astoundment that he had recognized no familiar landmark in the midnight faring through the hills or on the approach to the home of his childhood; of something akin to keen regret that the old had given place so thoroughly and completely to the new; of a feeling bordering on chagrin that he had been surprised into accepting the hospitable advances of a woman whom he had been intending to avoid, and for whom he had hitherto cherished—and meant to cherish—a settled aversion.

      But at the hand-gripping moment there was no time for a nice weighing of emotions. He was in his father's house; the home-coming, some phases of which he had vaguely dreaded, was a fact accomplished, and the new life—the life which must be lived without Patricia—was fairly begun. Also, there were many arrears to be brought up.

      "Intuition, on the manward side of it at least, doesn't go," he was saying with half-boyish candor. "I was awake last night when you drove home in the motor, and I looked out of the window and saw you as you came up the steps. According to the psychics, there ought to have been some inward stirrings of recognition, but there weren't—not a single thrill. Did the little—er—did СКАЧАТЬ