Chapter 4

Bud began to hunt in the inner recesses of his apparel.

"'N Ah 'low he cain't be well."

"He? Who?"

The Doctor's hopes of picking up his book again, which had risen when he heard of the admirable physical state of Melissa and the baby, sank once more.

"Mr. Baron. He sho' mus' be crazy to go out in such weather's this, 'n what's mo', to expect me to."

"He seemed to know the right person to apply to."

"That's the trouble with me. Ah'm that lackin' in good sense Ah do anythin' anybody asts me to 'cos Ah'm flattered to be ast!"

"Does he say he's sick?"

"He don' say so, but he looks powerful res'-less 'n wild-like. He came over 'bout noon 'n ast me would Ah carry you this letter."

Here Bud's prolonged search resulted in the discovery of the letter's outline under his sweater, and he extracted it by way of the neck of that elastic garment.

"Ah said, no, Ah wa'n' no fool to go out in such weather, 'n then he cut loose 'n talked the most awful language. Ah couldn' understan' a word of hit; Ah reckon hit's his foreign words or somethin', but Ah never heard anythin' like hit befo'. 'N then he ast me again, mahty quiet like, wouldn' Ah take this letter to you-all fo' him, 'n Ah jus' natchelly thought Ah would!"

The boy grinned sheepishly. The Doctor nodded and ran his finger under the flap of the envelope.

"So you think he's sick."

"M'lissy does. When Ah was puttin' the saddle on the mule she come out to the stable with them bits o' crocus sack fo' mah feet, 'n she said Mr. Baron'd jus' gone, 'n she 'lowed he had a fever comin' on, he looked so bad."

Dr. Morgan was reading the letter for the second time, frowning heavily over it.

"What do you-all think yo'self?"

"Well, Ah don' see how he can be right to walk a mile to our house in this weather, not needin' to, 'n to _in_-sist on mah comin' here. Is they e'er an answer?"

The older man rose and put a log on the fire, while Bud gathered together his primitive panoply and began to arm himself against the elements.

"You tell him, Bud, that Ah'll attend to it when the mud dries after this rain. Ah get enough hauling round to do in the mud, without anything extra," he added.

Bud's curiosity was suffering.

"Ain' you-all goin' to see him?"

"You tell him what Ah say." The Doctor picked up his book with an air of dismissal. "Shut the do' tight," he called, and then read the same page three times over with unthinking mind, until he heard Bob's step coming down the stairs.

"Bob."

"Sir?"

The young man looked out of the window, wondering how soon the rain would stop enough for him to go to see Sydney.

"Read this."

Bob took the letter.

"The Baron," he said, studying the small, foreign hand.

"Read it aloud."

Bob began obediently:

"MY DEAR SIR,--It is now more than three weeks that you played upon me a trick most treacherous. What it was I will not relate, for it would be needless. This I do assert, and more, that when you tell me you do not know what I mean, as you told me yesterday, you say not the truth. When I demand that you give to me the satisfaction that a gentleman should offer to another under such circumstances, I feel that I am treating you with a courtesy which you do not deserve. I think a whipping would suit better your contemptibility. Still, nevertheless, I conceal my pride, and I beg that you will meet me at whatever place you may appoint, and that you will fight with me with any weapon that you may choose.

"My unfriended condition in this country makes it not possible that I should be accompanied by a person who shall be suitable to be my second. But I entreat that my poverty in this respect will not deter you from bringing a friend with you.

"I am, sir,

"Yours with faithfulness,

"FRIEDRICH JOHANN LUDWIG V. RITTENHEIM."

Bob whistled,--a long sibilation of amazement,--and then laughed and laughed again.

"What have you-all been doing to the old fellow?"

"Ah haven't any idea."

"He says you talked it over yesterday."

"You hardly could say we discussed it," said the Doctor, dryly. "He insisted that Ah knew the drift o' his remarks, which Ah didn't, and rung in something about a man on a white horse."

"Who was he?"

"Blamed if Ah know. Ah begin to think, like Bud, the man's sick. He certainly was angry over something, and he used pretty strong language."

"Swearing?"

"No. Told me Ah lied."

Bob whistled again.

"That warmed you under the collar, I suspect?"

"It did wilt mah linen a trifle. However, Ah took it that, being a foreigner, he didn't know just how strong a word he was employing, so Ah drove off and left him."

"I reckon from this," holding up the letter, "he did know, and meant just what he said. It looks as if you'd been too lenient. You ought to have given him a biff or two on the spot."

"Maybe Ah had oughter."

Morgan pulled his beard thoughtfully.

Bob read the letter through once more.

"Quaint English, isn't it? The idea of a regular challenge gets me. I don't know when I've come across anything funnier."

"The notion ain't so novel to me, but duels are scarce nowadays. The State ain't so overly encouraging to them. Hand me down those Statutes and let me see exactly how they fix us."

Bob took the book from the shelf against the wall, and the Doctor turned over the pages.

"Here it is, in the Constitution. 'Article XIV., Section 2. Penalty for fighting a duel. No person who shall hereafter fight a duel, or assist in the same as a second, or send, accept, or knowingly carry a challenge therefor, or agree to go out of the State to fight a duel, shall hold any office in this State.' H'm," sniffed the Doctor. "Strikes me that won't prevent a lot of people from fighting. It discriminates against the would-be office-holder, but not against _me_, who wouldn't swallow an office if you put it in mah mouth."

"Or von Rittenheim, who wouldn't know one if he saw it! Perhaps it's a delicate tribute to the desire of all North Carolinians to serve their State."

"What disturbs me," said Dr. Morgan, shutting the book, "is that Ah like the fellow, and Ah don't want to shoot him all up fo' nothing. And, as Ah said befo', Ah sho' do think the fever's coming on him."

"What are you going to do?"

"Blest if Ah know!"

"What answer did you send?"

"Ah told Bud to tell him Ah'd attend to it when the mud dried."

"Good. That'll give you two or three days to find out what's the matter with him. Oh, what a joke, what a joke!"

Bob subsided into a chair, overcome with joy at the idea of his father as a participant in a formal duel.

"Let me know how it comes on, won't you, sir? May I be your second?"

"No," returned the Doctor, hunting his place in the discarded novel. "Ah'm laying off to have you governor some day, and Ah don't want to have you disqualified this early!"

Bob grinned appreciatively, and again explored the clouds.

"I'm going to see Sydney. May I show her this?"

Bob took his father's "H'm" for an assent, and went out to saddle his horse.

Von Rittenheim, sitting before the fire with _Wallenstein's Lager_ on his knee, but with eyes bent upon the flames that burst with tiny explosions from the logs, and with mind wandering far from thoughts of Schiller,--von Rittenheim was waiting with what patience he could command for Bud's return.

With the falling of the wind at dusk the rain ceased. Friedrich lighted his lamp and opened his door to look up the road, a view not commanded by his single window.

He prepared his evening meal of coffee and bread and the batter-cakes that he had learned to like and then to make in this land of the frying-pan. Still Bud did not come. At eleven o'clock he went to bed, for he knew that no countryman, unless he were going for the doctor, would be abroad at that hour, with such mud under foot.

The next day's noon brought no news of the recreant messenger, and von Rittenheim went to the Yarebroughs' cabin in search of him.

"He ain' home," Melissa said, in the raised voice that she felt to be necessary to the German's understanding of her English. "He's gone to shoot cotton-tails. Ah 'low Ah'll make you-all a pie, 'f ye like," she added, offering this practical sympathy to the suffering that she saw written on his face.

"A pie of cotton-tails! Delightful! It will give me pleasure," said von Rittenheim, politely, with vague notions of birds floating through his brain. "Did he--Bud--br-ring no message for me yesterday in the afternoon?"

"No. He said the Doctor 'lowed he'd 'tend to hit--what yo' letter was about--when the mud dried, 'n Bud reckoned that wasn' no message, 'n hit wasn' no use goin' over to tell you jus' that."

"When the mud dried," repeated Friedrich. "Remarkable! Good-morning, Mrs. Yarebrough. Most remarkable!" he kept repeating to himself as he walked home. "He is not afraid, of that I am certain. Why, then, does he delay? Remarkable!"

VII

In the Southern Appalachians

It was five o'clock, and a pretty girl, Katrina Wendell, was standing at one of the long windows of the drawing-room at Oakwood, looking out upon the storm.

She had not Sydney's unusual beauty, nor had she her imperious manner, the heritage to Southern women from generations of slave-holding ancestors; but she had charm and a certain distinction, and she had the stamp with which New York seals her daughters imprinted upon every tuck and frill of her clever gown.

"Katrina, it isn't polite to look so bored," said her brother John, who was amusing himself with Sydney's help by drawing caricatures of the men of the day.

Katrina flushed. She _was_ bored, but John was a beast to mention it. She had just brought her first season to an ignominious close by falling in love with the worst match of the year,--Tom Schuyler, handsome, irrepressible, and penniless. Mrs. Wendell promptly had refused her consent to the engagement, and, with equal decision and what Tom called "disgusting alacrity," had sent her daughter South under her brother's care to accept the hospitality of Mrs. Carroll, a life-long friend.

Under the circumstances it was not strange that the prospect from the window did not appeal to Katrina.

John, on the other hand, was reaping his reward for the self-sacrifice that had made him accept the duty of escorting his sister to North Carolina. Unlike the martyrs of old who went unprotesting to their doom, he had obeyed his mother's commands in no submissive spirit. It was a relief to the keenness of his martyrdom to kick against the pricks, and kick he did from New York to Flora, during all such parts of the twenty-four hours as were not occupied in attending to the wants of his admirable appetite, or in yielding to the refreshment of such repose as a sleeping-car can offer. Even he felt that his recompense was undeservedly great when he found himself welcomed at the little Flora flag-station by Sydney. He was twenty-eight, and at that age a pretty girl still stands far up on the list of diversions. No, decidedly, John was not bored.

Katrina made no answer to her brother's accusation.

"Poor Katrina," said Sydney, going to the window and standing beside her guest. "It is an abominable day for your first one. Just look at that!"--she summoned John by a glance over her shoulder; "pouring! And usually we pride ourselves on our view."

Sheets of rain were driving across the field at the foot of the knoll upon which the house stood. At times the mountains beyond were shut off entirely. Again the clouds overhead blew past, and through a leaden light the storms in the distance could be seen, thickening under some canopy of blackness, or ceasing as the upper mist grew thin.

"What an advantage it gives you to have such a stretch of open country," said John. "Here you can see a storm coming when it is yet twenty miles away, and make your plans accordingly; but in New York, with the horizon line on the roofs of the houses across the street, you may be caught by a shower that was lurking over the Battery when you left your own door."

"I can't understand the foliage being so little advanced," said Katrina. "It's the last of April, and yet the leaves hardly are starting. They aren't much ahead of the Park."

"You expected a Florida climate, perhaps. We never cease to have winter letters from people in the North who lament their cold, and wish they were with us on our 'rose-covered veranda in the Sunny South,' and it may be zero when we are reading their flights of imagination."

"Is it really ever as cold as that?"

"Not often, but quite often enough. I've known snow as late as the twentieth of April, and I've been to a picnic on Buzzard Mountain in January."

"We're always hearing about this wonderful climate. It sounds as if it were remarkable chiefly for eccentricity."

"Oh, the average temperature is very even. The summers are delightful, too,--a long warm season instead of a short hot one. Though you may have fires now and then, it's not cool enough to close the windows, night or day, from the first of May to the first of October, and yet it seldom goes over eighty-five."

"It's the equilibrium between altitude and latitude, showing what it can do, isn't it?" asked John. "The fact that we are half a mile above the booming waters of the deep, my dear Katrina, counterbalances the nine hundred miles that lie between us and that large and noisy city to which I have no doubt your heart is turning fondly."

"Here are some men on horseback, Sydney," said Katrina, again ignoring her brother.

The wind was dying and the rain was lessening with each fitful gust.

"Are they cavaliers approaching the presence, or hinds of the estate coming to crave an audience?" demanded John, who professed much amusement at what he had seen of the semi-feudal manner of life at Oakwood, and at Sydney's responsibilities with regard to the work of the farm and to the tenants.

The girl peered into the gathering gloom.

"It must be Bob Morgan. Yes, it is; and that looks like Patton McRae's black mare."

"By their nags ye shall know them," said John. "Who are these estimable youths? I look upon them with the eye of jealousy."

"Bob Morgan? Oh, he's Dr. Morgan's son. You passed his house near the post-office. And the McRaes live at Cotswold; there's a big family of them. Will you ring for tea, Mr. Wendell?"

"I fly to do your bidding, even though it be to succor my rivals, for such I feel they are," and he slapped his chest melodramatically.

Much stamping of feet and shaking of garments heralded the announcement of the two young men by Uncle Jimmy, the old colored butler.

"How good of you both to come in this weather," said Sydney, flashing a greeting at each one in turn. "You are just in time to prevent Miss Wendell from being bored to death."

"Delighted to prevent your demise," said Patton, promptly, and attached himself at once to Katrina's following.

"Uncle Jimmy," said Sydney to the old man who was poking the fire with an assiduity born of a desire to stay in the room as long as possible, "tell Mrs. Carroll that tea is just coming in, and that Mr. Bob and Mr. Patton are here."

"See what you've brought us, Mr. McRae," Katrina was saying, as a ray of sunshine broke the twilight darkness.

The mountains stood a deep and penetrable blue against a golden break behind the Balsams. Fierce black clouds hurried across the upper sky, dragging after them ragged ends of mist, and beneath this roofing the setting sun aimed its luminous shafts across the _rest_ made by Pisgah's rugged peak.

No one broke the spell of beauty by a word, but Wendell saw a glance pass between Sydney and Bob,--the look of sympathy sure of its fellow.

The sound of Mrs. Carroll's cane brought them all to their feet. She entered, tiny, autocratic, keen, leaning upon Uncle Jimmy's faithful arm.

"Good afternoon, Bob. Good afternoon, Patton. You are doubly welcome on this stormy day. Put my chair a little more to the side of the fireplace, Bob. Yes, Patton, the footstool, if you please. You may go, James. John, the hook for my cane is on the left of the mantel-piece. Katrina, tell Sydney to put a shade less cream in my tea than she did yesterday. No cake, thank you, John, but a rusk,--yes, a rusk appeals to me. Bob, what wild thing did you do on that horse of yours on your way here?"

"Not a thing, Mrs. Carroll. He came along like a Shetland pony. Gray Eagle doesn't like rain. It depresses him."

"Patton is riding the black mare to-day, grandmother," called Sydney from behind her tea equipage.

The old lady raised her eyes in comical despair and shook her head mournfully.

"You certainly have courage, my dear child."

"Only the courage of a Cotswold lion, I'm afraid. But you mustn't be distressed about her, she's really beginning to do Sydney credit."

"You see, Mr. Wendell, Black Monday was raised on the place here, and she's been the hardest colt to break of any we ever had. Patton owns her now, but I feel a personal responsibility for her because he took her out of my hands before she was thoroughly quiet."

"I see," nodded John, gravely, in accord with Sydney's seriousness. "You fear some burst of girlish exuberance."

"Did you see her roll in her saddle just as we were coming out of church Sunday?" asked Patton, turning eagerly to Sydney.

"How do you dare to use such half-broken creatures?" cried Katrina.

"My dear," said Mrs. Carroll, "when you've been with us a little while you'll realize how close we are to primitive conditions. To-day you break the horse you mean to ride next week. To-morrow you kill the steer or the pig or the chickens that were your pets to-day."

"I suppose it must be so always in the country, but you can't be very primitive here with a large town near by and a railroad."

"In reality we are only as far from the Asheville Court House as the people on the upper boundary of the Bronx are from Castle Garden; but in point of convenience, owing to the scarcity of trains and their poor arrangement, we are almost as near to Washington."

"Still, the railroad has opened the country and given the farmers new markets," asserted John.

"Undoubtedly; but that is not an unmixed good, in my opinion," said Mrs. Carroll, stoutly. "They sell more cabbages and apples, but they buy cheap fabrics and ready-made clothing in place of the stout homespun that the women used to weave."

"You'd be surprised," said Patton, "to know how little the country people use the railroad. There was an example of it day before yesterday. A man from McDowell's Creek, about six miles from Flora, took his first train-ride since the road was put through, fifteen years ago."

"How extraordinary that seems! It was the day of his life, I suppose." Katrina's eyes were large with amazement.

"In a way it was," said Bob, dryly, "for in Asheville he celebrated his adventures not wisely, but too well, and on the way out he fell from the platform and was killed."

"Bob, how can you be so flippant?" objected Sydney to the crestfallen young man. "It seems a terrible end."

"All sudden deaths seem terrible to us who are left behind," said Mrs. Carroll; "but even such an ending does not give us the shock that it would if we did not live in a community accustomed to the accidents consequent upon every man's carrying a revolver. It's a bad habit. I hope you boys don't do it."

"No, indeed, Mrs. Carroll," they both replied, with suspicious promptness, and they sat up very straight, so that the backs of their coats presented an unbroken line.

John smiled at them.

"Are they often used?" he asked.

"Quite too often," answered Sydney, gravely. "As grandmother says, we do, indeed, live close to nature. If a man is angry with his neighbor, he calls him to his door on some moonless night and shoots him."

"In primitive society the primitive wants of man are satisfied in primitive ways," remarked Bob.

"Moses ought to have put the Ten Commandments on something stronger than stone if he meant them to be unbroken," added Patton.

Mrs. Carroll shook her head at him.

"I don't see how you can be so very primitive," insisted Katrina. "Now this----" She glanced expressively about the room, where old portraits surmounted the dark panelling and heavy rugs glowed warmly in the firelight.

"Oh, we are as composite in our mountains as are the people of any other part of these composite United States," said Sydney. "The mountaineers themselves are a mixture. There are men in coves distant from the railroad who are living on land to which their ancestors drove up their cattle from the low country three or four generations ago. These men are a law unto themselves. They have no opportunities for educating their children, and once in a while you hear of a family that never has heard the name of God."

"My great-grandfather came here in the early eighteen hundreds," said Bob, "and a queer lot he must have found. They say that there was a crop of younger sons of good English families which had been planted here as a good country for the culture of wild oats."

"I suppose that in the eighteenth century this was as remote a place as any to lose black sheep in, if losing was their desire," suggested John.

"It's quite true, quite true, what Bob says," Mrs. Carroll took up the explanation. "Mr. Carroll used to tell me that he knew it to be a fact that Bud Yarebrough's father--Bud is a ne'er-do-weel who lives in a cove not many miles from here, Katrina, my dear--was a great-grandson of one of the Dukes of Calverley."

"Then Melissa's baby is the Lady Sydney Melissa Something-or-other!" laughed Sydney.

"There's a legend of a penal colony, too," said Patton.

"That is disputed," replied Mrs. Carroll.

"If there was one, Pink Pressley is of its lineage, I am sure," said Sydney.

"If heredity counts for anything, I should think that a colony of black sheep whose diet had been wild oats would account for all the lawlessness of the community," offered John.

"For a great deal of it, undoubtedly, and their life of freedom from restraint for so many years would be responsible for more."

"But these people are not close about you here," exclaimed Katrina.

"Indeed, they are. They are our neighbors and our friends. Why, there's a tenant on our place who has been tried twice for murder."

"Bob and I found a deserted still in the woods over the creek the other day," said Sydney. "That suggests another of our friends' occupations."

"But your influence must be at work among them constantly."

"We hope it is, and that is why we lay stress upon the compositeness of our settlement," said Mrs. Carroll. "There are the country people we've been telling you about, and there's a group of what we call Neighborhood people, for distinction's sake. The Delaunays at the Cliff were originally from New Orleans, and the Hugers were from Charleston, and we came from Virginia. Before the war we used to come over the mountains every summer in carriages to take refuge from the heat of the lowlands, and after the war we were glad to live here permanently."

"It was post-bellum poverty that drove us here from the Scotch-Presbyterian settlements in the middle of the State," said Patton. "We're another element."

"And is there really fusion going on as there is in other parts of the country?" asked Katrina.

"My people have assimilated with the peasantry, as I suppose Mrs. Carroll calls them, ever since they came," said Bob.

"This settlement must be unique," said John.

"No. I know of two not very far from here, and I've heard of others. The more fortunate people consider themselves as closely allied to the country as do the mountaineers. We are integral parts, and we insist on being so considered."