The Gay Rebellion Part 17

"I only caught a glimpse of them. They looked like fine ones, in splendid condition. Millicent! Quick, where are you?"

"Here!" came a third voice. "Oh, Constance! one is too perfectly splendid for anything! Chow-Chow is at his heels! Look out! Mark right!"

"Run!" panted Constance, leaping a fallen log.

The lovely June woodland was now echoing with the happy cries of the chase, the ki-yi of excited lap-dogs, the breathless voices of the young girls, the heavy cras.h.i.+ng racket of stampeding young men rus.h.i.+ng headlong through bramble and thicket with a noise like a hurricane amid dead leaves.

Vance's legs, terror weakened, wobbled as he fled; and after ten minutes he took to a tree with a despairing scream.

Brown, looking back from the edge of a mountain pasture, saw the dogs leaping frantically at his friend's legs as he s.h.i.+nned rapidly up the trunk, and disappeared into the cl.u.s.tering foliage; saw three flushed young girls come running up with cries of innocent delight; saw one of them release a slender, black, furry, spidery thing which immediately ran up the tree; heard distracted yells from Vance: "For heaven's sake, take away that marmoset! I can't bear 'em--I hate 'em, ladies! Ouch! He's all over me! He's trying to get into my pocket! Take him away, for the love of Mike, and I'll come down!"

But Brown waited to hear no more. Horror now lent him her infernal wings; he fairly fluttered across the mountain side, sailed down the farther slope, and into a lonely country road. Along this he cantered, observed only by surprised cattle, until, exhausted, he slackened his pace to a walk.

Rickety fences and the remains of old stone walls flanked him on either hand; the clearings were few, the cultivated patches fewer. He encountered no houses. On a distant hillside stood a weather-beaten barn, the sky s.h.i.+ning blue through its roof rafters.

Beyond this the road forked; one branch narrowed to a gra.s.sy cattle path and presently ended at a pair of bars. Inside the bars was a stone barn; beside the barn a house of the century before last--a low, square stone house, half stripped of its ancient stucco skin, a high-roofed one-story affair, with sagging dormers peering from the slates and little oblong loop-holes under the eaves, from which the straw of birds' nests fluttered in the breeze.

Surely this ancient place, even if inhabited--as he saw it was--must be sufficiently remote from the outer world to insure his safety. For here the mountain road ended at the barn-yard bars; here the low wooded hills walled in this little world of house, barn, and orchard, making a silent, sunny place under the blue sky, sweet with late lilac bloom and the hum of bees. No factory smoke was visible, no Italians.

He looked at the aged house. A black cat sat on the porch thoughtfully polis.h.i.+ng her countenance with the back of one paw. Three diminutive parti-coloured kittens frisked and rolled and toddled around her; and occasionally she seized one and washed it energetically against the grain.

Brown looked at the door with its iron knocker, at the delicately spread fan-light over it, at the side-lights, at the half-pillars with their Ionic capitals, at the ancient clumps of lilacs flanking the stone step--great, heavy-stemmed and gnarled old bushes now all hung with perfumed cl.u.s.ters of palest lavender bloom.

Leaning there on the picket fence he inhaled their freshness, gazing up into the sunny foliage of the ancient trees, elms, maples, and one oak so aged and so magnificent that, awed, his eyes turned uneasily again toward the house to rea.s.sure himself that it was still inhabited.

Cat and kittens were comfortable evidence, also a hen or two loitering near, and the pleasant sound from a dozen bee-hives, and a wild rose in a china bowl, dimly visible on an inner window-sill.

There were two characters he might a.s.sume; he might go to the back door and request a job; he might bang on the front door with that iron knocker, shaped like a mermaid, and ask for country board.

Of one thing, somehow or other, he was convincing himself; this crumbling house and its occupants knew as much about the recent high-jinks in New York as did the man who built it in the days when loop-holes were an essential part of local architecture, and the painted Sagamore pa.s.sed like a spectre through the flanking forests.

So Brown, carrying his suit-case, opened the gate, walked up the path, seized the knocker, and announced himself with resolution.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XIX.

WHILE he waited the cat looked up at him, curiously but pleasantly. "h.e.l.lo, old lady," he said; and she arched her back and rubbed lightly against his nigh leg while the kittens tumbled over his shoes and played frantically with the frayed bottoms of his trousers.

This preliminary welcome seemed to comfort him out of all proportion to its significance; he gazed complacently about at the trees and flowers, drew in deep breaths of the lilac's fragrance, and waited, listening contentedly for the coming foot-fall.

He had not heard it when the door opened and a young girl appeared on the threshold, standing with one hand resting on the inner k.n.o.b; the other touching the pocket of her ap.r.o.n, in which was a ball of yarn stuck through with two needles.

She was slim and red-haired and slightly freckled, and her mouth was perhaps a shade large, and it curled slightly at the corners; and her eyes were quite perfectly made, except that one was hazel-brown and the other hazel-grey.

Hat in hand, Brown bowed; and then she did a thing which interested him; she lifted the edges of her ap.r.o.n between slender white thumbs and forefingers and dropped him the prettiest courtesy he had ever seen off the stage.

"I came to inquire," he said, "whether you ever take summer boarders."

"What are boarders?" she asked. "I never heard of them except in naval battles."

"Thank heaven," he thought; "this is remote, all right; and I have discovered pristine innocence in the nest."

"Modern boarders," he explained politely, "are unpleasant people who come from the city to enjoy the country, and who, having no real homes, pay farmers to lodge and feed them for a few days of vacation and dyspepsia."

"You mean is this a tavern?" she asked, unsmiling.

"No, I don't. I mean, will you let me live here a little while as though I were a guest, and then permit me to settle my reckoning in accordance with your own views upon the subject?"

She hesitated as though perplexed.

"Suppose you ask your father or mother," he suggested.

"They are absent."

"Will they return this morning?"

"I don't know exactly when they expect to return."

"Well, couldn't you a.s.sume the responsibility?" he asked, smiling.

She looked at him for a few moments, and it seemed to him as though, in the fearless gravity of her regard, somehow, somewhere, perhaps in the curled corners of her lips, perhaps in her pretty and unusual eyes, there lurked a little demon of laughter. Yet it could not be so; there were only serenity and a child's direct sweetness in the gaze.

"What is your name?" she asked.

"John Brown 4th."

"Mine is Elizabeth Tennant. Where do you live?"

"In--New York," he admitted, watching her furtively.

"I was there once--at a ball--many years ago," she observed.

"Not very many years ago, I imagine," he said, smiling at her youthful reminiscence.

"Many, many years ago," she said thoughtfully. "I shall go again some day."

"Of course," he murmured politely, "it's a thing to do and get done--like going abroad."

She looked up at him quickly.

"Years ago I knew a boy--with your easy humour and your trick of speech. He resembled you otherwise; and he wore your name becomingly."

He tried to recall knowing her in his extreme youth, but made no definite connection.

"You wouldn't remember," she said gravely; "but I think I know you now. Who is your father?"

"My father?" he repeated, surprised and smiling. "My father is John Brown 3rd."

"And his father?"

"My grandfather?" he asked, very much amused. "Oh, he was John Brown 2nd. And his father was Captain John Brown of Westchester; but I don't want to talk D. A. R. talk to you about my great grandfather----"

"He fought at Pound Ridge," said the girl, slowly.

"Yes," said Brown, astonished.

"Tarleton's cavalry--the brutal hussars of the legion--killed him on the Stamford Road," she said; "and he lay there in the field all day with one dead arm over his face and his broken pistol in his hand, and the terrible galloping fight drove past down the stony New Canaan road--and the smoke from the meeting house afire rolled blacker and blacker and redder and redder----"

With a quickly drawn breath she covered her face with both hands and stood a moment silent; and Brown stared at her, astonished, doubting his eyes and ears.

The next moment she dropped her hands and looked at him with a tremulous smile.

"What in the world can you be thinking of me?" she said. "Alone in this old house, here among the remoter hills of Westchester. I live so vividly in the past that these almost forgotten tragedies seem very real to me and touch me closely. To me the present is only a shadow; the past is life itself. Can you understand?"

"I see," he said, intensely relieved concerning her mental stability; "you are a Daughter of the American Revolution or a Society of Colonial Wars or--er--something equally--er--interesting and desirable----"

"I am a Daughter of the American Revolution," she said proudly.

"Exactly," he smiled with an inward shudder. "A--a very interesting--er--and--exceedingly--and--all that sort of thing," he nodded amiably. "Don't take much interest in it myself--being a broker and rather busy----"

"I am sorry."

He looked up quickly and met her strange eyes, one hazel-grey, one hazel-brown.

"I--I'll be delighted to take an interest in anything you--in--er--this Revolutionary business if you--if you don't mind telling me about it," he stammered. "Evenings, now, if you have time to spare----"

She smiled, opened the door wider, and looked humorously down at him where he stood fidgeting on the step.

"Will you come in?" she asked serenely.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XX.

HE went, first depositing his suit-case on the step outside by the cats, and followed her into a large, comfortable sitting room.

"By jove," he said, "you know this is really mighty pretty! What a corking collection of old furniture! Where in the world did you find--or perhaps this is the original furniture of the place?"

She said, looking around the room as though slightly perplexed: "This furniture was made to order for me in Boston."

"Then it isn't genuine," he said, disappointed. "But it's a very clever imitation of antique colonial. It is really a wonderful copy."

"I don't think it is a copy."

"It certainly doesn't look like it; but it must be if it was made in Boston for you. They're ingenious fellows, these modern makers of colonial furniture. Every antique shop in New York is loaded up with excellent copies of this sort--only not nearly as well done."

She a.s.sented, apparently with no very clear understanding of what he meant.

"What a charming setting this old house makes for such things," he said.

She nodded, looking doubtfully at the rag carpet.

"The Manor House was much finer," she observed. "Come to the window and I'll show you where it stood. They were fine folk, the Lockwoods, Hunts, and Fanchers."

They rose and she laid one pretty hand on his sleeve and guided him into a corner of the window, where he could see.

"h.e.l.lo," he said uneasily, "there is a main travelled road! I thought that here we were at the very ends of civilisation!"

"That is the Bedford road," she said. "Over there, beyond those chestnuts, is the Stamford road. Can you see those tall old poplars? Beyond the elms I mean--there--where the crows are flying?"

"Yes. Eight tall poplars."

"The Manor House stood there. Tarleton burnt it--set it afire with all its beautiful furniture and silver and linen! His hussars ran through it, setting it afire and shooting at the mirrors and slas.h.i.+ng the silks and pictures! And when the Major's young wife entered the smoking doorway to try to save a pitiful little trinket or two, an officer--never mind who, for his descendants may be living to-day in England--struck her with the flat of his sword and cut her and struck her to her knees! That is the truth!"

He said politely: "You are intensely interested in--er--colonial and revolutionary history."

"Yes. What else have I to think of--here?"

"I suppose many interesting memories of those times cl.u.s.ter around this old place," he said, violently stifling a yawn. He had risen early and run far. Hunger and slumber contended for his mastery.

"Many," she said simply. "Just by the gate yonder they captured young Alsop Hunt and sent him away to the Provost Prison in New York. In the road below John Buckhout, one of our dragoons, was trying to get away from one of Tarleton's dragoons of the 17th Regiment; and the British trooper shouted, 'Surrender, you d.a.m.ned rebel, or I'll blow your brains out!' and the next moment he fired a bullet through Buckhout's helmet. 'There,' said the dragoon, 'you d.a.m.ned rebel, a little more and I should have blown your brains out!' 'Yes, d.a.m.n you,' replied John, 'and a little more and you wouldn't have touched me!'"

Brown looked at her amused and astonished to hear such free words slip so eagerly from a mouth which, as he looked at it, seemed to him the sweet mouth of a child.

"Where did you ever hear such details?" he asked.

"People told me. Besides, the house is full of New York newspapers. You may read them if you wish. I often do. Many details of the fight are there."

"Reading such things out of old newspapers published at the time certainly must bring those events very vividly before you."

"Yes... . It is painful, too. The surprise and rout of Sheldon's 2nd dragoons--the loss of their standard; the capture, wounding, and death of more than two score--and--oh! that young death there in the wheat! the boy lying in the sun with one arm across his face and the broken pistol in his hand! and his wife--the wife of a month--dragging him back to this house--with the sunset light on his dead face!"