Part 9

"He looks as his father did at his age," returned Mrs. Morgan, fondly, glancing across to where her husband was talking to a group of lank mountaineers from whom he was hardly to be distinguished.

"It's right nice of you to come this afternoon, Mrs. Carroll," Bob was saying. "The people always appreciate it. What is it, mother? Those boys? Oh, they're having a game of ball; and the men you see over yonder are throwing horseshoes over a peg--with mighty poor skill, too. Here come Patton McRae and Susy. Excuse me. I'll help him with his horses," for Patton's black mare hated the harness even more than she did the saddle, and was doing her best to demoralize her mate and overturn the buggy.

Sydney, entering the field from the State Road, glanced past the tethered mules and the chair-laden wagons, from which the horses had been taken, to where Bob sat in the carriage beside Susy, saying something very pretty to her, if downcast lids and a blush are any evidence; in reality, teasing her about an absent sweetheart.

Wandering farther, her eyes saw the quoit-throwers, and the groups of women and children sitting in the shade, enjoying an interchange of gossip with the zest of infrequent meetings. She saw the clusters of laughing negroes, and the tent where Pete and his wife were doing a vigorous business in cakes and ice-cream and lemonade. She waved her hand to her grandmother and Mrs. Morgan. She noticed the men and boys who strolled with apparent aimlessness towards the thicket on the edge of the field, and returned wiping their lips on their sleeves. And she saw Katrina talking animatedly to Baron von Rittenheim, who sat beside her, while Patton McRae watched her with adoring eyes, and Tom wore the conscious smile that indicates the young husband's pride of possession.

Sydney had been feeling very much without occupation since the Baron had gone home, and the anticipation of seeing him again this afternoon had been pleasant to her. He never had made love to her more definitely than on the morning after his interview with Dr. Morgan, but to herself she acknowledged that he admired her, and while she was not sure of his entertaining a more pronounced feeling, up to this time she had known, at least, that his eyes were only for her. And here he was _revelling_--she underlined the word in her thought--in Katrina's vivacity and charm. The sensation of rivalry was new to her and not pleasant.

As for Bob, she had a feeling of warm affection for dear old Bob, and a desire to be useful to him, and she meant to make her influence over him one for good, if that were possible. She was thoroughly glad in the news that had come to her that Bob had not been drinking for several months now. But how he could help referring to the passage that had occurred between them she could not understand. She didn't really want him to make love to her,--that was a notion altogether too unmaidenly,--but she did feel as if an expression of affection from _somebody_ would be very comforting.

She turned to John Wendell, who rode beside her, and gave him a more generous smile than it had been his lot to receive while Sydney was the possessor of those agreeable anticipations of the early afternoon.

"You like it? All this?" She waved her hand comprehensively.

"I love it," he answered, promptly, looking at her clear-cut face with its frame of red hair under her sailor hat, and at the well-made linen habit.

"It must be novel to you."

"Not very." He pulled his moustache to conceal an amused smile. "It depends upon where new ends and old begins, you see. Now, I came down here in April, so my feeling is not 'the last cry.'"

"But at that time of year you didn't see--oh, how foolish you are!" she cried, and touched Johnny with her spur. His response brought him near the phaeton, which seemed a focal point for a general movement.

"They're going to have the gander-pulling now," exclaimed Bob, who had come with Susy to join the group. "The best view will be from this side."

"Are you going to ride, Mr. Morgan?" asked Katrina.

"Yes, I think so."

"Bob never can resist any game that's played with a horse," said Sydney, laughing.

"You know you'd like right well to try it yourself," he retorted.

Baron von Rittenheim gave his seat beside Mrs. Schuyler to Miss McRae, and went to Sydney's side.

"At last the sun begins to shine," he said, in a low voice, smiling up at her and patting Johnny's neck.

"Your universe has many suns, I'm afraid," responded Sydney, a trifle pettishly, yet swiftly, scanning his face for signs of returning health. She was not unobservant, either, of his new white summer clothes.

Friedrich glanced across the horse to Mrs. Schuyler.

"I find agr-reeable the light of the lesser planets," he said, "but--there is only one Sun."

Looking up at her, he laughed again, so heartily and with such genuine pleasure at seeing her that Sydney melted.

"You look so _well_," she cried. "It is a delight to see you. But it's not a compliment to our care that you grow better so fast when you leave us."

"R-rather is it a tr-ribute to your so admirable nursing that has pr-repared me to r-recover with speed, even though I have it no longer."

"Will you ride, Baron?" asked Bob. "You're welcome to Gray Eagle if you will."

"I thank you, gr-reatly, but I dare not. The eye of my care-taker is upon me, and your Herr Father is here somewhere. No, decidedly, I am afraid," and he leaned with every appearance of contentment against Johnny's shoulder.

"How about you, Mr. Wendell?"

"I think I will, if Miss Sydney will trust me with the horse."

"Of course; and I'll give you a lovely prize if you bring me the head."

"It's yours," cried John, while Friedrich bit his lip, in annoyance, and thought on the _Ewigweibliche_.

"Can you find me something, Mr. Morgan?" cried Schuyler. "I really can't stand here and see you fellows having this fun without me."

"What's Mr. Schuyler driving, Sydney? 'Possum? She'll do, if you don't mind. I'll swipe a saddle off of one of those mules over there." And he and Tom fell to unharnessing the useful 'Possum, while the Baron held Gray Eagle and commented on Bob's resource.

"He is full of device," he said, heartily, "and r-ready, always, to think and to do." And Sydney remembered some of the things he had done, and nodded with misty eyes.

XV

The Gander-Pulling

Under all the trees where horses had been hitched, the mountaineers were tightening girths, mending unsound bridles, and pulling down stirrups from the saddles across which they had been flung to be safe from fly-kicking hoofs.

Some men had switches tucked under their saddle-flaps. Others, less provident, swung on to their beasts, and, heavily elastic, trotted across to the brush to cut a "hickory" from a sourwood-tree.

Pete was testing the strength of a stout oak pole driven into the ground, across whose fork was lashed, like the cross-bar of a "T," a leaf-stripped sapling. To the tip of this rod the negro was tying the legs of a big, white goose, whose extended wings and pendant head betrayed compliance with inexorable law.

"Hit's a damn shame," Pete murmured, as he anointed the creature's neck and head with liberal smearings of lard. "Whar de fun o' pullin' on a ole daid t'ing lak dis? But Ah hope dey'll tink hit's great!" And he beat vigorously on a pan to attract the attention of all hearers.

"Gen'lemen. O-oh, gen'lemen!" he cried, at the top of his lungs. "Now fo' a great ole gander-pullin'! De only one we've had in dis settle-_ment_ fo' t'ree year. Every gen'leman as craves to enter dis gander-pullin' will kin'ly ride up here and _de_-posit a quarter 'f a dollar. Only twenty-five cen's fo' de priv'lege o' takin' a pull at dis yer goose,--warranted a tasty goose! One-half dis sum o' money goes to de gen'leman who succeeds in _re_-movin' de haid from dis fowl, an' also de goose hitself, which sho' do look lak good eatin'!"

Pete's old hat soon sagged with the coins that were tossed into it, while his keen eye noted each entry as surely as if he wrote the name in black and white. It would have been useless for anyone to try to enter the lists without paying the proper fee.

Two lines of excited onlookers served at once to define a lane, whose ultimate point was the gallows whereon hung the goose, and to rouse to excitement the horses, whose overworked spirits did not respond promptly to the sudden stimulus.

They cheered the aspirants with jovial condemnation.

"Show us what yo' ole plug c'n do, 'Gene."

"Sho', Alf, you-all ain' goin' to ride that po' critter!"

"He's powerful gaunted up, yo' war-horse, Bud."

"Mighty strength'nin' ploughin' is, but not stimmerlatin'!"

"High-strung animal, that clay-bank o' Pink's."

Pink's temper was in that state where he enjoyed hugely gibes at his friends' expense, but was in no mood to receive amiably jests directed against himself.

"Whar's you-all's horse?" he shouted, in exasperation, to one of his tormentors. "Ah reckon no one would len' you anythin' mo' vallyble 'n a billy-goat. Now dry up. Pete, start this thing."

He rode to the end of the passage where the horsemen were gathering. Alf Lance, Melissa's father, whose horses Bud and Pink were riding, scanned them both to make sure that they were not too drunk to be trusted with his animals.

Pete fussed about nervously.

"Which o' you gents will begin dis pullin'?" he called. "Now, sahs, come on."

Pink pushed his horse towards the edge of the crowd, but he was hailed with dissuasive cries.

"Aw, hold on, Pink."

"Don' be so bigoty."

"Who you-all think ye are?"

"Where's Bob Morgan?"

"Yes, Bob's the feller!"

"O-oh, Bob!"

It was their tribute to the Doctor, this giving precedence to his son, and Bob so understood it. It was, therefore, irritating to have Pink thrust forward his red face and look him over sneeringly.

"Aw, gwan," he cried, "lessee what you-all c'n do."

The bunch of horsemen fell to one side, and Bob started Gray Eagle from well back in the field near the deserted wagons. He passed the mounted men and thundered through the lines of standing howlers. The gray had been his master's coadjutor in so many situations of excitement and even peril, that the cheering mob did not provoke him unduly. He galloped, unswervingly, up to the hanging goose, though his ears were pricked forward, and he shuddered as the instinctive repulsion from death pulsed through him. Bob's outstretched hand grasped the long and slippery neck, while the inarticulate yell with which the Southern farmer calls his dogs and chases his cows and terrifies his enemies went up from the onlookers. Tightly he clutched the greasy thing, and tried to give a sharp twist that should break the vertebræ. But his hand slipped swiftly down to the flat head, which offered no hold for his grasp, the beak ripped through his fingers, and the sapling, which had bent and followed him as Gray Eagle dashed on, snapped back, waving triumphantly its unharmed burden.

"Hard lines, old man, but the fun lasts longer so," cried Wendell, as Bob pulled up beside him after circling the spectators.

"Who's that?" the New Yorker asked, as a lank country horse plunged down the lane, shied violently at the feathered horror, threw his rider into the crowd, and galloped with flapping stirrups over the field.

"'Gene Frady. He never can stay on anything. He's all right, dad," to the Doctor, who was moving towards the upper end. "See, he's chasing his horse now."

With a drunken whoop, Pink Pressley rushed his animal towards the prize; but his condition, combined with twitches and jerks of the bridle, and rakings of the spur, had acted upon his mount's usually stolid nerves, and half-way up the alley he whirled about and tore back, carrying his cursing rider far up the road before he calculated the probable results to himself of this outburst, and consented to return.

Bud Yarebrough was more fortunate. He leaned far forward and succeeded in getting a firm grasp of the neck, but he had guided his horse too close to the bird, and his jerk drew it directly over his face, blinding him with grease and feathers.

His plight was greeted with howls of derision, which fell into silence as John Wendell made the trial. His unpractised hand in some way pulled down the goose, and the rebound of the sapling plucked the booty out of his grasp, and flung it high above his head.

Tom Schuyler was equally unlucky.

Alf Lance forgot that he was left-handed until he was close upon his quarry, when he dropped his reins and pawed vaguely at the air as his horse carried him on.

Another yell announced Pink Pressley's return. Now his chastened steed bore him straight enough to the goal, but by that time Pink was too drunk to distinguish the goose he was after from the flock that swirled and dipped before his eyes, and he never touched a feather.

"Doctor, you-all'll have to show us how," said Alf Lance.

"Come on, Doctor."

"Yes, yo' the feller."

"Bob, give yo' father yo' horse and let him larn ye what's what."

"Oh, I hope he'll do it," cried Sydney. "He's capital at it!"

"Fo' the Lawd's sake!" ejaculated Mrs. Morgan, rising to her feet in the carriage and steadying herself by an informal hand on Mrs. Carroll's shoulder. "Fo' the Lawd's sake, if that ain't Henry Morgan! Well, did you ever!" And her fat body trembled with pride and excitement.

Gray Eagle took his second turn with the same equanimity as if his own master were on his back. He galloped handsomely towards the goose; there was a quick snatch and a snap, and the old man turned short and came back, holding aloft his trophy.

"Wah, wah, wah!"

Yells, whistles, and cat-calls greeted his success. Sydney and Katrina and Mrs. Carroll clapped their hands, and the Doctor, folding in his handkerchief the somewhat dubious treasure, rode over to the apple-tree and presented it to his wife.

During the confusion attendant upon the harnessing of horses and mules, Bob, restoring 'Possum's saddle to the mule from which he had borrowed it, heard Pink Pressley's voice on the other side of the big oak by which he was working.

"Howdy, Mr. Baron," he was saying.

"How_dee_," responded von Rittenheim, with an accent that made Bob throw back his head and laugh silently. "You had bad fortune with your horse this afternoon."

"Correct. Damn pore horse. Some day Ah'll have a good horse o' mah own, not a ole borrowed plug. Ah'm goin' to be rich some day. You-all know how, eh? Say,"--he was wagging his head solemnly to and fro, disgustingly near von Rittenheim's face,--"Ah reckon you'd like to go into business with me now ye made a start at hit."

Bob remained behind his shield, hoping that Pressley would go away before von Rittenheim had the mortification of seeing him.

"Ah reckon you-all need money mahty bad," drawled the drunken voice. "A feller always does when he wants to get married, 'n hit's clear what yo' after with Miss Sydney."

Like bolts from heaven, two blows fell upon him simultaneously, and von Rittenheim and Bob faced each other over his fallen body.

"Leave him alone," said Bob, hoarsely. "He'll sleep it off."

Then he strolled over to his father.

"Dad, I suspect you'd better take a look at Pink Pressley under the big oak-tree. I've just given him a biff in the solar plexus, or mighty near it."

XVI

On the Bridge

All through July the growing heat of summer forced the people of the low country up into the mountains in search of an altitude where humidity is not a factor in the sum total of suffering. Every evening's six o'clock train brought families of travellers, glad to escape from the steaming heat of Charleston or Savannah, or ready to run the risk of the fever-killing frost coming too late for the beginning of the New Orleans schools. They emerged dishevelled and weary from the hot cars. The elders counted children, nurses, and luggage; the children sat down at once upon the ground and took off their shoes and stockings.

By the first of August the whole Asheville plateau was transformed from its winter state.

The large towns were filled with pretty, pale girls, gay in muslins and ribbons and big hats, who danced and drank soda-water in the mornings and danced again in the evenings, or went on drag-rides, and flirted at all hours.

The small hotels in the country were full of the same girls, chaperoned by gay mammas, who played whist six hours a day, while their charges found temperate amusement in walking to the post-office in the cool, purple dusk, and in dancing--chiefly with each other--after supper.

The proportion of men to girls was the usual summer ratio. Nice discriminations of extreme age or extreme youth counted for little against ability to dance. The girl with brothers of almost any size was popular among her kind, and the girl who "grabbed" was held in cordial contempt.

Woe be unto the youth who really fell in love. His courtship was the cynosure of all eyes. Its progress was reported hourly. His presence was noted and his absence commented upon. His ardor was gauged by the thermometer of many eyes, and the barometer of hotel partisanship betrayed the storms of love.

The Neighborhood awoke from its winter sleep. Every house had its guests, and there were constant gayeties both by day and evening.

The first moon of August, by lighting the dark forest roads, became responsible for nightly festivities. On one of the earliest evenings of the month she looked down upon carriages and horsemen making their way to the French Broad, where Fletcher's Bridge crosses the river. The Schuylers, with Sydney and John, were in the Oakwood surrey, while Vandeborough cantered behind to take care of the horses "while de white folkses eats."

[Illustration: To the French Broad, where Fletcher's Bridge crosses the river]

The Cotswold party filled a three-seated buckboard and a surrey, and rejoiced further in outriders. Baron von Rittenheim bestrode his mule. The Delaunays brought a carriage-load of girls, who laughed a great deal in the soft, full voices the far South gives her daughters. From the Hugers' party came scraps of talk about "the City," and the "Isle of Palms."

There was a wagon-load of people from the Buck Mountain House, too, friends of the Hugers.

By Sydney's command the picnic fire was built by the river's bank in a large field, whose openness showed the quick march across the heavens of the rising moon.

Every one brought a stick to lay on the blazing pile. Bob and one of the Delaunay girls fetched water from a spring that hid its coolness under a shelving rock in the forest across the road. Susy McRae made the coffee, hindered by John's advice, more voluble than useful. Tom Schuyler was instructed in the proper method of propping up a broiler before the blaze, so that the chicken might cook without exacting a human burnt offering. Patton volunteered for the task of getting the potatoes into the ashes. The rest of the girls laid the table-cloths on the ground, and opened the baskets, and the rest of the men hunted up logs for seats, and brought the cushions and rugs from the carriages.

Sydney dominated the scene, giving a clever suggestion to Tom, encouraging Susy to disregard John's teasing, which threatened some harm to the coffee, sympathizing with Patton over a burn, and showing Katrina how to cook bacon on a long forked stick.

After the meal was eaten and complacency filled them, she it was who sent their suppers to the coachmen, and who packed up baskets and folded cloths, aided by von Rittenheim and Bob.

"Oh, do stop doing that, Sydney," cried Mildred Huger. "You make us all feel so mean not to be helping you, and you know it isn't necessary right now."

"Yes, come and sit by me, Sydney," said John. "I've been saving a place, and it'll be a treat for you."

"Wait a few minutes, Sydney," said Tom, "and you shall have my valuable help."

"There, it's all done, dear people," cried Sydney, "and we can watch the moon with a clear conscience."

"Will you not come with me to the bridge to see it?" begged Friedrich, in a low voice. "Ah, do come!"

Bob, who had been about to ask the same thing, turned away and stretched himself at Mildred Huger's feet. Susy softly touched her guitar, suggesting popular airs, and voices took up the tunes, now stopping to say something funny and to laugh while others carried on the song, now joining in an energetic chorus. On the outskirts of the circle farthest from the dying fire sat the couples in whom the soft night and the moonlight and the music were arousing sentiment. More than one young fellow watched Friedrich and Sydney as they disappeared behind the willows on the bank, and wished that he had been the first to suggest the bridge, and envied the two their vantage point.

They stood side by side upon its hoof-worn planks. Under their feet swept the musical flow of the stream, molten silver in the moonlight as it slid towards them, a sparkling, dancing mist of tossing diamonds as it fled away over the stones of the rough bottom.

They faced the wonderful glory of the moon. Her hand was on the bar at first, and his beside it. After a moment he glanced at the tempting nearness, and put his in the pocket of his jacket. Then he turned his back upon the moon, and leaned on the railing by her, facing the lesser splendor that was to him as dazzling.

"Will you for-rgive me if I spoil the beauty of this per-rfect night by speaking to you a little about--myself?"

His voice was serious. Sydney looked at him and turned away her head. Her lips trembled.

"I have not the r-right to force upon you a subject so unwor-rthy. But I think it is just that you should know--that all my friends should know--what work I am going to tr-ry now to do to retr-rieve myself. Ah, you make the little gesture that means 'Say not that word.' But you will let me say just this one time ever-ything I want to, if you please. When I say 'retr-rieve myself,' I understand well that nothing can destr-roy the fact that my name is wr-ritten on those books over there,"--he waved his hand in the direction of Asheville,--"and I know well that for my fault all my life I shall suffer in one way or another. But I can tr-ruly say, in God's sight,"--he stood bareheaded, and faced again the heaven's pomp,--"that I have r-repented my weakness most bitterly, both for what it did lead me to, and because such weakness in itself is shameful."

Sydney lifted to his her eyes blurred with tears.

"Don't," she whispered, hoarsely.

"_Ach_, Heaven help me, look not at me like that," he cried; "I cannot bear ever-ything!"

Silence lay between them after this cry of pain. Friedrich began again, very low.