Chapter 16

"IMMEDIATELY I COME TO YOU!"

And so the time passed until the morning upon which the same railroad train which had brought young Robert Carruthers down into the valley home of his forefathers, arrived with yet another son of France and his secretaries and servants. All were in attendance at the station of arrival, from the Secretary of State, the General Carruthers, who in his large car was to take the Count de Bourdon to the Gouverneur's Mansion for immediate introduction, down to good Cato in a very new gray coat and a quite shiny black hat.

"Stand right alongside, Robert," commanded my Uncle, the General Robert, as he arranged with impatience a large white rose I had placed upon the lapel of his very elegant gray coat. "I never did like heathens. They make my flesh crawl. Be sure and repeat slowly all he says, damn him!"

"He will speak to you in English very like unto that I use, I feel sure, my Uncle Robert," I said with a great soothing.

"He will not, sir, he will not!" answered my Uncle, the General Robert, with a great impatience. "Half the blood in your veins is the good red blood I gave you, sir, and never forget that. Look what a man it has made of you!"

"Yes, my Uncle Robert," I answered with a great sadness but also some amusement. In my heart I prayed that always when I had left him he would think that blood to be the good red blood of a man of honor and not of a woman of lies. It might be that some day he would be proud that still another man of his house had died in battle for France and--never know.

It was while my eyes were covered with a mist of tears that I heard the great railway train approaching, which was perhaps to bring me my dishonor, and I drew those tears back into my heart and stepped forward to the steps of the car from which I could see a very slight and short but very distinguished looking Frenchman about to descend.

"I thank the good God I have never before encountered him," I said in my heart as I stood in front of him.

"Lieutenant, the Count de Bourdon, I make you welcome to the State of Harpeth, in the name of my Uncle, the Secretary of that State," I said to him in the language of his own country as I clapped together my heels and gave to him the bow from the waist of a French gentleman who is not a soldier. "Will you permit that I lead you to that Uncle?"

"Many thanks, Monsieur, is it Carruthers I name you after your distinguished relative?" he made answer to me as he returned my bow with first one of its kind and then a military salute.

"Robert Carruthers, sir, and at your service," I made answer to him with a great formality. And as I spoke I saw that he gave to me a glance of great curiosity and would have asked a question but at that moment my Uncle, the General Robert, stood beside us.

"I present to you the General Carruthers, Secretary of the State of Harpeth, Monsieur the Lieutenant, the Count de Bourdon of the forty-fourth Chasseurs of the Republique of France." I said with again a great ceremony and a very deep bow.

"I'm mighty glad to welcome you to Old Harpeth, Count. How did you make the trip down? said my Uncle, the General Robert, as he held out his large and beautiful old hand and gave to the Count Edouard de Bourdon such a clasp that must have been to him most painful. And as I beheld that very tall grand old soldier of that Lost Cause look down upon that very polished and small representative of the French army, that American eagle began a flapping of his wings against the strings of my heart where I had not before discovered him to reside.

"But he is not as my Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles," I said in reproof to that eagle, which made a quiet in my heart so that I could listen to the words returned by the man of France to the man of America.

"I thank you, Monsieur the Secretary of Harpeth; my journey was of great pleasure and comfort," were the words which he returned in very nice English.

"Then we'll go right up and see Governor Faulkner at the Capitol before lunch, Count, if that suits you," my Uncle, the General Robert, said with a very evident relief at those words of English coming from that French mouth. "Here's my car over this way and this is Mr. Clendenning, who'll look after the rest of the gentlemen in your party and bring them on up to the Capitol."

"Monsieur," said the Lieutenant, Count de Bourdon, with another bow and then a quick recovery as he saw that he must take the hand of Buzz, held out to him in great cordiality. These handshakes of America are very confusing to those of Europe.

I saw a great laughter almost to explosion in the eyes of my Buzz at the very little man who had such a great manner, and I made a hurrying of him and my Uncle, the General Robert, to the large car standing beside the station.

"I will precede you in my Cherry," I said as I saw both the gentlemen seated together upon the back seat of the large black machine.

"No you don't; you take your seat right in here with us, to be on hand if any bridge of this international conversation breaks down under the Count and me," answered my Uncle, the General Robert, with stern command.

"Is it that the young Monsieur Carruthers had an education in France?" asked the Lieutenant, the Count de Bourdon. "He has the air of French--shall I say, youth?" And as he spoke again I saw a gleam of deeply aroused interest in his eyes which made my knees to tremble in their tweed trousers.

"Born there; son of my brother, who died at the Marne," made answer to the question my Uncle, the General Robert.

"It is now that I make a remembrance. That Capitaine Carruthers was the husband to the very beautiful Marquise de Grez and Bye. In her youth I was her friend. I did not know--" but as the Lieutenant, the Count de Bourdon, was making this discovery which sent a thrill of fear into the toes of my very shoes, the car stopped at the main entrance of the Capitol and halfway down the long flight of steps stood His Excellency, the great Gouverneur Faulkner of the State of Harpeth, waiting to receive the guest who came on a mission to him from a great land across the waters. Until I die and even into a space beyond that, I shall take that picture of magnificence which was made by my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner as he stood in the May sunlight with his bronze hair in a gleaming. I thought him to be a great statue of Succor as he held out both of his strong hands to the smaller man who had come from a stricken land for his help.

"_Le bon Dieu_ keep of his heart a friend of France," I prayed as I watched those hands clasp as my Uncle, the General Robert, made the introduction.

And all the long hours of that long day were as dreams of sadness and fear to me as I went about the many duties of entertainment laid upon me. At luncheon at that Club of Old Hickory I sat opposite the small Frenchman who sat on the right hand of my Gouverneur Faulkner, and opposite to me sat my Uncle, the General Robert. No business was in discussion at that time but I could see those eyes of French shrewdness make a darting from one face to another and ever they came back to me with a great puzzle which gave to me terrible fear.

To all the plans for his entertainment he gave an assent of delight and for that two days' journey down into the grazing lands of the Harpeth Valley he had a great eagerness until told that it was to be undertaken upon the morrow.

"Is it not that we will be occupied on the morning of to-morrow with the signing of those papers of importance, Your Excellency?" he asked with a grave annoyance which was under a fine control.

"The Secretary of State, General Carruthers, and I think it will be best that you see the grazing lands of Harpeth and some of the mules being put into condition before the signing of the contracts," was what was "handed out to him," as my Buzz would have expressed it, by my Gouverneur Faulkner with a great courtesy and kindliness as he helped himself to some excellent chicken prepared in a fry. I could see a great start of alarm come into the eyes of that small Lieutenant, the Count de Bourdon, at those calm words, but he gave not a sign of it. In my heart was a great hope that something had been discovered for the protection of my soldiers of France, and I also took to myself a portion of that excellent chicken and did make the attempt to consume it as I beheld all of those great gentlemen performing. I believe that under excitement men possess a much greater calmness of appetite than do women.

"Monsieur le Gouverneur, it is not necessary that I behold those lands and those mules; the signature of the great Gouverneur of the State of Harpeth will make a mule to grow from a desert, in the eyes of the French Government," he said with a smile of great charm spreading over his very small countenance.

But just at this moment, when a reply would have been of an awkwardness to make, the music, which is made by a most delightful band of black men for all eating in that Club of Old Hickory, began to play the great Marseillaise, and with one motion all of the gentlemen in that dining room rose to their feet in respect to the distinguished guest of that Old Hickory Club. Also many friendly glances were cast upon me, which I returned with a smile of great gratitude.

"Yes, the pen is mightier than the mule stick in his eyes, the scoundrel," remarked my Uncle, the General Robert, as I drove to the Capitol with him in his car, while the Gouverneur Faulkner took his guest with him in his.

"Is any proof been found that he shall not do this robbery to France, my Uncle Robert?" I asked with great eagerness.

"Trap is about ready to spring, but not quite. God, but Jeff Whitworth is a skilled thief! I know what he is up to but I can't quite get it on the surface. Keep the French robber busy, boy, for a little longer, and I'll land him. Here we are at the office! Now you get busy keeping them busy--and I'll land 'em. If not, I'll go and show France what real fighting is and I'll take you with me into the worst trench they've got! Battles, indeed--they ought to have been at Chickamauga. Now depart!" With which words my Uncle, the General Robert, got out of the car and left me to direct it to wherever I chose.

"I have a warmth at heart that the three men most beloved of me would go onto the French battle line with me," I murmured to myself as the black chauffeur drove me back to that Club of Old Hickory to get me again in company of my Buzz. "And yet it is the custom of women to believe that they command the deepest affection of which a man is possessed. And, _helas_, it is believed to be impossible for a comrade that he be also a lover!"

It has been my good fortune to be one of the guests at many very brilliant receptions of much state in some of the very grand and ancient palaces of the different countries of Europe, but at none of them have I seen a greater brilliancy than at the one given in his Mansion by the Gouverneur Faulkner of the State of Harpeth in America. All of that old Mansion, which has the high ceilings and the decorations of a palace, if not quite the size, was adorned with very large masses of a most lovely and handsome flower, which is of many shades of a pink hue set in dark and shining leaves and which is called the rhododendron. There were many lights and music of a softness I have never heard equaled, because the souls of those black men seem to be formed for a very strange kind of music. Also I had never beheld women of a more loveliness than those of the State of Harpeth, who had come from many small cities near to Hayesville at an invitation of very careful selection for their beauty by my Buzz.

"Let's give him a genuine dazzle," he had remarked while making a list for the sending of the cards.

And most beautiful of all those beautiful _grande dames_ was that Madam Patricia Whitworth, who, with her husband, stood at the side of His Excellency, the great Gouverneur Faulkner, for the receiving of his guests. Her eyes of the blue flowers set in the snow of crystals were in a gleaming and the costume that she wore was but a few wisps of gossamer used for the revealing of her radiant body. In my black and stiff attire of the raven I stood near to the other hand of the Gouverneur Faulkner and there was such an anger for her in my heart that it was difficult that I made a return of the smile she cast upon me at every few minutes. Was there a mockery in that smile, that she had discovered my woman's estate and was using her own beauty for a challenge to me? I could not tell nor could I judge exactly what the smile of boldness which the Lieutenant, the Count de Bourdon, cast upon me, might mean. And in doubt and anxiety I stood there in that great salon for many hours to make conversation with the guest of honor easy with those who came to him for presentation, until at last I was so weary that I could not make even a good night to my Uncle, the General Robert, when we entered, long after midnight, the doors of Twin Oaks.

When in my own apartment, alone with the beautiful Grandmamma, I cast myself upon the bed upon which my father had had birth, and wept with all my woman's heart which beat so hard under that attire of the raven.

"Scarcely one more day and perhaps I must flee in dishonor from all the love of these friends," I sobbed to myself, but deeper than all that I wept for the picture of that beautiful woman at the side of my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner.

And then suddenly as I lay in my weeping the telephone upon the table beside my bed gave a loud ringing in the darkness that was long after midnight. Very quickly from fear I covered my head with my pillow and waited with a great fluttering of heart.

Then a second time it rang with a great fury and I perceived that I must make a response to it.

I arose and took that receiver into my hand and spoke with a fine though husky calmness.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Is that you, Robert?" came the voice of my beloved Gouverneur, which made the heart of that anguished Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye, beat into a sudden great happiness though also alarm.

"Yes, Your Excellency."

"Can you dress very quietly, get your car and come up here to the Mansion without letting anybody know of it?"

"I will do what you command."

"I need you, boy, and I need you quick."

"I come."

"Stop the car at the street beyond the side door and come in that way. Cato will let you in. Come to my bedroom quietly so as not to wake Jenkins. Can you find your way?"

For just one single long second that _grande dame_, Roberta, the Marquise of Grez and Bye, cowered in fear upon her warm bed in the house of her Uncle, the General Robert, at the thought of going out into the night at the command of a man, and then that devoted daredevil, Mr. Robert Carruthers, answered into the telephone to the Gouverneur Faulkner:

"Immediately I come to you."