Part 2

“Lor’, no!” she hastened to assure him. “But ’f you don’t like dogs an’ ’coons an’ things, you’d better not.”

“Oh, I don’t mind ’coons and--and things,” said Roden, somewhat vaguely. “I’ll come, thank you.”

They went down a long hall, descended a little stair-way whereon the moonlight fell bluely through a square window high above, down more steps, along another passage with sharp turns, and in at an already open door. An old negress, vividly turbaned, was heaping wood upon an already immense fire.

“Lor’, mammy!” called Miss Herrick, “for mercy’s sakes stop! ’F you put any more wood on that fire you’ll have to get up on th’ roof an’ shove ’t down th’ chimney.” The “’coons and things” were already crowding about them.

Roden recognized several of his canine friends of the morning, and there were, moreover, two splendid old hounds, which at sight of their evidently beloved “Faginia” set up a most booming yowl of welcome. There were also the ’coon; a curious flat-stomached little beast, that flew about after a startling fashion from chair to chair, and which Miss Herrick introduced as a “chipmunk;” a corn-crake; a young screech-owl; and three large Persian cats.

All these pets, he discovered later, had been presented from time to time by the “last Englishman,” or “the Englishman before the last,” or “the Englishman before the one with the glass eye,” or the fat wife, or the ugly sister, or what not.

“If I can only add a gorilla or a condor to this unique collection,” reflected Roden, “my position is assured. I will probably be forever the ‘last Englishman,’ and I will always be mentioned as ‘the Englishman who gave me the gorilla.’”

He then sat down in a corner as far removed as was consistent with politeness from the other inhabitants of the apartment, and occupied himself with watching “Faginia,” her “mammy,” and the “things.”

“Aunt Tishy,” said Miss Herrick, indicating him with a movement of her bright head, as he sat withdrawn into his coign of vantage, like a hermit-crab within its shell, “that’s the new Englishman, Mr. Roden.”

“How yo’ do, sur? Hope yo’ coporosity segastuate fus rate, sur,” quoth the dusky dame, with an elephantine dab, supposed in the innocence of her Virginian heart to correspond to the courtesy of civilization.

“My what?” said Roden.

“She means she hopes you are well,” explained Virginia, about whose neck the raccoon was coiling himself with serpentine affection.

“Oh yes, thanks, very well. Are you?” said Roden.

“Gord! yes, sur; Tishy she _al’uz_ well--ain’ she, honey?” This last appeal to Virginia.

“Oh yes,” said that young woman “’cep’ when you get th’ misery, or th’ year-ache in th’ middle o’ th’ coldest nights, an’ have me huntin’ all over creation for somethin’ to put in your year. Oh yes!”

“G’way, chile!” exclaimed the thus maligned personage, with an air of indignant sufferance. “If I didn’ know yer wuz jess projeckin’, I sutny would feel bade.”

“Oh no, you wouldn’t,” said her mistress, easily. “_This_ one,” again indicating Roden, “’s goin’ in fur horse-racin’. Some of his horses’s comin’ day after to-morrer. That’s better’n Herefordshire cattle, ain’t it?”

“Co’se _you_ think so,” said Aunt Tishy, with something between a sniff and a grunt, as she settled herself in the chimney-corner with a basket of darning, and fell to work, stretching the stockings to be mended over a little gourd.

“Why, Aunt Tishy?” said Roden, beginning to feel as though he were a character in a book, and might spoil the plot by saying the wrong thing.

The old negress looked up at him over her big gold-rimmed spectacles, with her great underlip pushed out, showing its pale yellowish lining.

“Lor’! sur,” she said, “Miss Faginny’s plum crazy ’bout horses. Ev’ybody on de place’ll tell you dat. I alwuz hol’s as how somebody done cunjur her mar ’fo’ she was bown. Dat’s why she so run made ’bout horses. Somebody sutny _is_ cunjur Miss Faginny. I’ll say dat with my last bref!”

“Oh, shut up, mammy!” here interpolated Virginia.

“I sutny will,” reiterated the old black.

“Cert’n’y will what?” said Miss Herrick; “shut up? I’m sure I hope so, and I know Mr. Roden does.”

She rose and put down the raccoon, who immediately clambered up to the carven top of an old oak press close by, and hung there, smiling genially.

Virginia busied herself in getting out her spinning-wheel and winding the distaff with blue wool. As she sat down to her spinning, with her closely plaited fair hair falling into her lap, a novel thought suggested itself to Roden, namely, that this blond maiden might be a Desdemona dressed up as Marguerite, with the Moor concealed as her nurse.

He watched with a strange sensation of unreality the whirring wooden wheel, the soft falling of the blue thread upon the floor, the dusky smoke-stained rafters of the room, wherefrom hung strings of onions and red peppers in gay festoons; the old negress, wrinkled as to her black face with busy absorption; the moving of the different creatures in the sombre depths of shadow. Now it was the glint of the corn-crake’s flame-like crest as he thrust an inquisitive head from his position on a shelf over the mantle. Now the white gleam of the raccoon’s sharp teeth as he grinned with an amiable persistency upon the room and its inmates. Now the old hounds grumbled uneasily in their sleep, or the Persian cats leaned against his legs with luxurious, undulating appeals to be caressed.

“Why don’ yo’ sing, honey?” said Aunt Tishy; “yo’ know yo’ kyarn’ harf wuk ef yo’ don’ sing.”

“Yes, do sing, Miss Virginia,” said Roden. “A nig--I mean a darky song,” he added, quickly.

“What shall I sing, mammy?” questioned she.

“Dat ’pen’s on whut kinder song de gen’leman wants.”

“Well, what kind do you want?” she asked him.

“Something characteristic,” he replied.

Thus adjured, she sang to him, in a very rich contralto voice, the following ditty:

“Ole ark she reel, ole ark she rock, Settin’ up on de mountain-top. Ole ark a-movin’, movin’ chillun-- Ole ark a-movin, I thank Gord!

“Ole hyah, whut make yo’ eye so pop? I thank Gord fuh tuh see how tuh hop! Ole ark a-movin’, movin’, chillun-- Ole ark a-movin’, I thank Gord!

“Ole hyah, whut make yo’ legs so thin? I thank Gord fuh tuh split ’gin de win’! Ole ark a-movin’, movin’, chillun-- Ole ark a-movin’, I thank Gord!

“Ole hyah, whut make yo’ hade so bal’? I thank Gord ben butt ’gin de wall! Ole ark a-movin’, movin’, chillun-- Ole ark a-movin’, I thank Gord!”

Before Roden could say anything, she rose and put aside her spinning-wheel, holding out to him her long shapely hand, which was covered with tan as with a brown glove to within about an inch of her homespun sleeve. “Good-night,” she said; “I’m sleepy. Father won’t be here now till tuh-morrer. I s’pec’ he slept at Cyarver’s. Everything’s ready--your barth an’ everything.”

Thus dismissed, Roden took himself off to bed. As he dropped to sleep to the tune of “Ole ark a-movin’,” he was conscious of uncomfortable memories concerning haunted rooms in old Virginian mansions. Not that he believed in ghosts--Heaven forbid!--but some one might--some little nigger, you know--might play one a trick.

He was roused suddenly and unpleasantly by three solemn raps on the door at his bed’s head.

“Well--what is it?” he said, in an unnecessarily loud tone.

“’Tis me--Aun’ Tishy,” replied an unmistakable voice. “Please come to de do’, sur, jess a minute.”

He answered this appeal, opening the door cautiously an inch or two, whereupon she thrust into his hands a little white bundle.

“Dis heah’s fo’ yo’ to war tuh-night. Marse Gawge he don’ war no night-shuts, and dey am none o’ th’ other Englishers lef’ none; so I jess stole you one o’ Miss Faginny’s. Don’ say nothin’ ’bout it, please, sur, ’case ef dar _is_ one thing Miss Faginny’s ’tic’lar ’bout, ’tis her clo’es.”

Roden took the long white garment gingerly, as men lift a young baby, bade Aunt Tishy good-night, and closed the door. He then went to the fire and began to examine what that colossal personage had inferred to be “Miss Faginny’s night-shut.”

It was a capacious arrangement of very thin linen, and superfine little frills of a like material--hardly the garment in which an overseer’s daughter would have wooed repose. The young man looked at it carefully and gravely from all points of view, then went and hung it over the mirror, and returning to bed, regarded it with the mute attention which he had before bestowed on the drab-colored Madonna. It was a dainty thing, probably a relic of some previous Englishman’s wife or daughter, and the rosy light from the handful of fresh cones which he had thrown on the fire stole in and out of its sheer folds caressingly.

He left it hanging there, and the last thing he remembered that night was its gleam, as of a pretty ghost in the firelit dusk of the big room.

II.

He could have sworn that he had slept but a moment when a terrific squeaking and squealing, yelping and growling, under his windows, aroused him with sufficient abruptness.

His first idea was that the “’coons and things” were “killin’ each other clean out,” after the fashion of Miss Virginia’s supposition in regard to the Scriptural beasts in the story of the ark.

Looking out, however, he saw that a large black and white hog was being chased, nipped, barked at, and otherwise maltreated by the mastiff and the collie. The frightened beast rushed hither and thither, squealing and grunting, and the two dogs followed, falling over each other in the eagerness of pursuit. After a while the mad trio disappeared to the farther end of the long terrace.

Dawn had just broken. The east was one deep even tone of mellow gold, translucent, palpitating. Over against it lay gray streamers as of a tattered banner. The morning-star seemed to spin with a cold blue glitter as of ice in the voluptuous saffron of its setting. A band of trees stood out against the vivid east, with bold relief of indigo leaves and branches, like a gigantic tracery of unknown hieroglyphics. Over field and lawn a white steam rose and melted slowly--blue hill and tawny meadow appearing and disappearing as the pearly masses rolled together or dissolved.

Roden heard with supreme delight the confidential voice of a little nigger announcing through the key-hole (their favorite channel of communication) that his “trunks dun come.”

He got with all speed through his ablutions, and, when his boxes were brought, into a well-worn shooting-coat and knickerbockers, determining as he laced his hob-nailed boots to “do” the farm thoroughly that morning, and devote the rest of the day to mountain-climbing and explorations generally.

As he went out on the square portico at the front of the house he met Miss Herrick, again in her boy’s dress, leading the mastiff and the collie with either hand. She had evidently been to the rescue of the black and white hog, and both dogs had a sneaky appearance, as though they knew a flogging was in store for them.

“Mornin’,” she said to Roden, with her grave directness of regard. “How’d you sleep?”

Before he could reply, a voice, rising in long, wailing tones upon the chill air, interrupted them.

“O-o-o-o Po!” it called; “O-o-o-o _Po_!” then a pause as if waiting for a reply. Then again, “Aw-w-w Po-po! Aw-w-w _Po_-po!”

“It’s father callin’ Popo,” explained Virginia.

“Who’s Popo? Another nigger?”

“Yes,” briefly.

“What does ‘Popo’ stand for? Napoleon?” questioned Roden, much interested.

“No,” she said. “’F you wait an’ listen you’ll hear. Father always calls like that at first. ’F Po answers tuhecly he’ll jus’ stop. ’F he don’t answer, father’ll jus’ go on callin’ till he says th’ whole name.”

Roden listened with absorbed attention.

“O-o-o-o Popo! Popo! Popo!” rang out the voice, with angry staccato insistence. “You Popo! Aw-w-w! you _Po_po!” Then, presently, “O-o-o-o! you Po-po-cat-e-petl!”

“Good heavens!” said Roden, bursting into laughter. “Is that really the poor little devil’s name?”

“Mh--mh,” said Virginia, with a nod of assent. “There was three of ’em born all to oncet. One’s called Popocatepetl, an’ one Iztaccihuatl, an’ one Orizaba. We call ’em Popo, an’ Whattle, an’ Zabe.”

“That triumvirate ought to rule something,” said Roden. “Could a nigger ever be President, Miss Virginia? What a lark it would be to speak of President Popocatepetl! What’s the other name?”

“Page,” said Miss Herrick.

“Page!” echoed the young Englishman--“_Page?_ why surely that name belongs to the ‘F.F.V.’s,’ doesn’t it?”

“All the darkies took th’ name o’ th’ fam’lies they b’longed to after th’ war,” she explained. “I had a cook here oncet called Faginia Herrick; she used to b’long to father ’fo’ th’ war.”

“By gad!” was Roden’s sole remark. “By _gad_!” said he again.

“_You_ needn’t say nothin’!” she exclaimed, breaking suddenly into her melodious laughter; “there’s two little right _black_ niggers at th’ mill, an’ one’s called Prince Albert and th’ other Queen Victoria, ’n’ ’f you leave off th’ ‘Prince’ or th’ ‘Queen’ they won’t answer you, neether.”

She was evidently delighted with his expression of face at this, and released the two dogs in order to indulge more freely in her mirthful mood. She sat down on the stone steps, letting her arms hang simply at her sides, and putting down her head, laughed into the hollow lap of her gray kirtle, as though confiding her surplus merriment to its care.

It was at this moment that the overseer came into sight--a tall, gaunt man, with a beard that seemed flying away with his round head, after the fashion of a comet’s tail; little steely blue eyes drawing close to the bridge of his nose as though it magnetized them; long, crooked teeth, not unlike the palings in one of his own fences for tint and irregularity; and a wide-open square smile, like the smile of a Greek comic mask. He wore a waistcoat of as many hues as Joseph’s renowned garment, a blue cotton shirt, ginger-colored trousers tucked into heavy mud-crusted boots, and a straw hat, impossible to describe, tilted to the back of his head. In his arms he carried the little black-and-tan terrier which Roden remembered, and twisted its untrimmed ears while talking.

“Howdy? howdy?” he remarked, genially. “My darter Faginia’s tole me ’bout you. Got all yo’ clo’es lef in Washin’ton? Hey? Got ’em this mornin’? You don’ sesso? Well! My darter Faginia says as how you’re goin’ in fur horse-racin’? That so? You don’ sesso? Well, what d’you think er my darter Faginia, anyhow? Darter, go ’n’ bring me some water; I’m mortal thirsty.” Then, as the girl disappeared, “Well, what d’you think er her?”

“She seems to me very--very charming,” ventured Roden.

“Well, sir, you ’ain’t got no more idea of th’ sweethearts that girl’s had--I mean would ’a’ had ’f I’d ’lowed it. The las’ one was Jim Murdoch, a hoop-pole man. But, sir”--here Mr. Herrick assumed a tone of the most pompous dignity--“but I will tole you, sir, as how my darter Faginia shall deceive _no_ retentions, _respecially_ from a hoop-pole man!”

“A hoop-pole man?” said Roden.

“That thar’s hit, sir, an’ I cert’n’y means what I says,” replied the overseer, relapsing again into his former slipshod easiness of speech and manner. “Consequently were, the beauty of the question air my darter Faginia won’t get married twel she gets a mighty good offer.”

“I should say you were perfectly right,” assented Roden.

“Well, yes, sir; I should sesso. I s’pose you ain’t married, air you?”

“No. Do I look very like a married man?” said Roden, who continued to be amused. He thought the overseer almost as interesting as Virginia.

“Well, no,” assented old Herrick, manipulating his abundant beard with an air of deep thought. “But the beauty of the question air, you kyarn’t al’uz tell. Them as looks the mostest married gen’ly ain’t. An’ contrarywise, them as don’t, air--”

“Married?” said Roden.

“Well, considerbul, mostly,” said the overseer.

Here Virginia returned with a gourd of water, keeping the quick-falling drops from her father’s not too immaculate attire while he drank by means of her skilfully hollowed hands.

“Yo’ breakfas’ ’s ready,” she said over her shoulder to Roden. He went in, and found it to be a slight variation on the last night’s meal. There were some corn-meal cakes--batter cakes, Virginia called them--and miraculously cooked mutton-chops. A half-hour later the overseer appeared at the window to offer his services as guide over the farm.

When Roden returned from his investigations it was one of the great clock in the hall, and the sky like a vast blue banner overhead.

He went out on the “front porch,” and called to Herrick as he crossed “the yard,” with the little terrier at his heels. “Is there a good view from that hill just back of the house?” he asked.

“Mos’ people goes fyar crazy over it,” said Herrick. “Hit’s a right rough climb to the top. Want tuh go up? Faginia kin show you. O-o-o-o-o Faginia! Faginia!”

Virginia appeared, clad from throat to heels in a vast brown apron, her half-bare arms covered with flour, and her thick braids skewered across the top of her head with a big wooden knitting-needle.

“Makin’ bread?” said her father. “Well, yo’ kin get yo’ mammy to finish that. Mr. Roden here he wants to go trapeezing up to th’ top o’ Peter’s Mountain. I tole him you could show him.”

“All right,” she said, briefly; “but I kyarn’t walk: the Alderney heifer stepped on my foot this mornin’. I’ll ride if you like:” this last to Roden.

“By all means,” he said; “but if you do not mind, I had rather walk.”

“Of co’se,” she said, and disappeared again.

“The beauty of the question air,” said her sire, looking proudly after her, “that gyrl kin ride like a Injun.”

“She seems to do everything well,” said Roden, with a pleased recollection of those mutton-chops which Aunt Tishy had confided to him “Miss Faginia done herself.”

“She cert’n’y does,” said Herrick, and after making some unique excuse disappeared also.

Miss Herrick appeared a few moments later, again clad in her boyish attire, and mounted upon a fidgety little roan mare. She had slung a wicker basket from the saddle, and Roden heard a merry clink as of glass kissing silver when the mare sidled about.

“That’s a clever-looking little nag,” said Roden. “Is she yours?”

“Nuck,” said Virginia. “I reckon she’s yours; she goes with the place.”

“I didn’t see her this morning,” Roden said, somewhat puzzled.

“No; she’d gone to the shop to get a new shoe; that’s why. I reckon you’ll name her over.”

“Why?” said Roden. It seemed to him he had never put that monosyllabic question so often before in the entire course of his life.

“’Cause it ain’t very pretty,” Virginia explained. “Father named her--it’s Pokeberry.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Roden, laughing. “I rather fancy it. It’s uncommon, to say the least. I don’t think I’ll change it.”

“Well, there’s two others I _know_ you’ll change,” she asserted. “They’re two carriage-horses, an’ they’re named Peckerwood an’ Hoppergrass.”

“Capital!” said Roden, laughing again. “Change them?--not much! Shall we start now?”

It was a perfect day--perfect as only a day in Southern winter-tide can be. The air was radiant, wine-like, while with a still further suggestiveness little glittering insects spun around and around in the sunlight like the particles of gold-leaf in eau-de-vie de Dantzic. The roads, dried in some sort by the steady wind of the past night and morning, were mellowed to a dull orange in lieu of their former startling crimson. Infinite tones of faded browns and grays wrapped wold and hill-side. The sky, of an intense metallic pallor, was covered with gauze-like masses of wind-torn cirri. As they went on, a sycamore thrust its bone-white arms before a dark hollow in the mountain-side, reminding one of a skeleton guarding the mouth of a cavern, where during its life it had concealed some treasure. The harsh call of crows, beginning in the far east, passed in _crescendo_ above their heads, and died away as the heavy birds flew westward.

Virginia, apparently unconscious of his presence, was watching Roden narrowly as he walked at her side. Owing to that peculiar faculty with which only women are endowed, she was enabled thus to observe him while seemingly absorbed in the sun-shot vista of the road before them. He had taken off his coat, as the increasing sunlight and the exertion of walking had overheated him, and his flannel shirt expressed damply the splendid modelling of his supple body. She noticed how the sunburn stopped in a line about his throat, the fair flesh showing beneath with a girlish whiteness, as is often the case with very strong men.

“It’s a heap whiter than mine,” thought Virginia.

“I wish you’d sing,” he said, suddenly. “Will you?”

“A nigger song?” said the girl, with a growing intuition in regard to his wishes. She then sang as follows:

“Bright sunny mornin’ Nigger feel good, Axe on he shoulder Goin’ fur de wood. Little piece er hoe-cake ’Thout any fat; White folks quoil ’Case he eat all o’ dat. Hop ’long, hop ’long, hop ’long, Peter, Hop ’long, Peter’s son! Hoppergrass sittin’ on a sweet-e’ayter vine, Big tuckey-gorbler come up behine, Hop ’long, Peter’s son.

“One bright mornin’ John did go Down in de medder fur ter mow; Ez he mowed acrost de fiel’ Great big sarpint bit him on de heel. He juck it up right in he hand, And back he went tuh Maury Ann; ‘Oh, Maury Ann, oh, don’ you see, One ole sarpint done bit me!’ Hop ’long, hop ’long, hop ’long, Peter, Hop ’long, Peter’s son.”

Roden was delighted with her rich, reed-noted voice. She imitated the negroes’ tones to perfection. The inflection and intonation were without fault.

“How well you do it!” he said. “It’s really awfully pretty. Can’t you give me another?”

She sang him one or two more, and ended by repeating in a singsong fashion a little rhyme which convulsed him:

“Mars’r had a leetle dorg, An’ he was three parts houn’; Ev’y time he strike a trail He bounce up off de groun’.”

“They make up all these things, of course?” he asked her.

“Oh yes,” said Virginia: “they’re awful fond of ‘makin’ hymes,’ as they call it. Here’s another:

“Ef I had a needle an’ thread, Big ez I could sew, I’d stitch my ’Liza to my side, An’ off down de road I’d go.”

He amused himself by trying to sing some of the various ditties after her, but, as they began to ascend the mountain, found that he needed all the breath at his command.

The dead leaves, sodden with the winter rains, closed in masses about the feet of Pokeberry, and of the young Englishman as he tramped untiringly at her muzzle. The shaft of a young pine rose slender and virginal from the lace-work of bare trees, its plumy crest breaking with lucent emerald the sea-blue reach of sky. A cardinal-bird flashed, with unconscious contrast, against the neutral tints of the woody distance, meshed as it were in the multitudinous glittering of sunlit twigs. From the leaf-stirred silence, far in the heart of the forest, came the urgent rat-a-plan of a woodpecker. Dead leaves occasionally, loosened by the fitful wind, fell, turning slowly in their descent, now between the startled ears of Pokeberry, themselves most leaf-like, now upon Virginia’s skirt or hat, as she sat wordless, listlessly supporting the reins upon her knee.