Part 2 (1/2)
”How do I know it--I mean daybreak?” I asked, with eagerness and hesitation both in my voice, as Pan started padding out through the monster-haunted darkness towards the square of silver light beyond the huge door. As I asked my question I followed close at his heels.
”I'll be going through to Plunketts and I'll call you, like this.” As we came from the shadows into the moonlight beside the coach, Adam paused and gave three low weird notes, which were so lovely that they seemed the sounds from which the melody of all the world was sprung. ”I'll call twice, and then you answer if you are awake. If not, I'll call again.”
”I'll be awake,” I a.s.serted positively. ”Won't you--that is, must I fix--”
”That's all for to-night, and good night,” he answered me with a laugh that was as reedy as the brisk wind in the trees. In a second he was padding away from me into the trees beyond the garden as swiftly as I suppose jaguars and lithe lions travel.
”Oh, don't you want some supper?” I called into the moonlight, even running a few steps after him.
”Parched corn in my pocket--lambs,” came fluting back to me from the shadows.
”Supper am sarved, little Mis',” Rufus announced from the hack door, as I stood still looking and listening into the night.
”Uncle Cradd,” I asked eagerly at the end of the food prayer that the old gentleman had offered after seating me with ceremony behind a steaming silver coffee urn of colonial pattern, of which I had heard all my life, ”who is that remarkable man?”
CHAPTER III
”Si Beesley? Spare rib, dear?” was his disappointing but hospitable, answer in two return questions to my anxious inquiries about the Pan who had come out of the woods at my need.
”No; I mean--mean, didn't you call him Adam?”
”n.o.body knows. Now, William, a spare rib and a m.u.f.fin is real nourishment after the nightingale's tongues and snails you've been living on for twenty-odd years, isn't it?” As he spoke Uncle Cradd beamed on father, who was eating with the first show of real pleasure in food since we had had to send Henri back to New York, after the crash, weeping with all his French-cook soul at leaving us after fifteen years' service.
”I have always enjoyed that essay of Charles Lamb's on roast pig, Cradd,”
answered father as he took a second m.u.f.fin. ”I know that Lamb used to bore you, Cradd, but honestly now, doesn't his materialism seem--”
”Oh, Uncle Cradd, please tell me about that Adam man before you and father disappear into the eighteenth century,” I pleaded, as I handed two cups of steaming coffee to Rufus to pa.s.s my two elderly savants.
”There is nothing to tell, Nancy child,” answered Uncle Cradd, with an indulgent smile as he peered at me over his gla.s.ses. ”Upon my word, William, Nancy is the living image of mother when we first remember her, isn't she? You are very beautiful, my dear.”
”I know it,” I answered hurriedly and hardly aware of what I was saying; ”but I want to know where he came from, please, Uncle Cradd.”
”Well, as near as I can remember he came out of the woods a year ago and has been in and out helping about the farms here in Harpeth Valley ever since. He never eats or sleeps anywhere, and he's a kind of wizard with animals, they say. And, William, he does know his Horace. Just last week he appeared with a little leather-covered volume, and for four mortal hours we--”
”They says dat red-haided p.e.c.k.e.rwoods goes to the devil on Fridays, and Mas' Adam he cured my hawgs with nothing but a sack full of green cabbage heads in January, he did,” said Rufus, as he rolled his big black eyes and mysteriously shook his old head with its white kinks. ”No physic a-tall, jest cabbage and a few turnips mixed in the mash. Yes, m'm, dey does go to the devil of a Friday, red-haided p.e.c.k.e.rwoods, dey does.”
”By the way, Cradd, I want you to see a little volume of the Odes I picked up in London last year. The dealer was a robber, and my dealer didn't want me to buy, but I thought of that time you and I--”
”Not one of the Cantridge edition?”
”Yes, and I want you--”
During all the rest of supper I sat and communed with my own self while father and Uncle Cradd banqueted with the Immortals.
Even after we went back into the low-ceilinged old living-room, which was now lighted by two candles placed close together on a wonderful old mahogany table before the fire, one of the dignified chairs drawn up on each side, with my low seat between, I was busily mapping out a course of action that was to begin with my dawn signal.
”I'd like to get into the--trunk as soon as possible. There is something I want to look up in my chicken book,” I said before I seated myself in the midst of one of the battles that raged around Ilium.
”Nancy, my dear, you will find that Rufus has arranged your Grandmother Craddock's room for you, and Mary Beesley came over to see that all was in order,” said Uncle Cradd, coming and taking my face into his long, lean old hands. ”G.o.d bless you, my dear, and keep you in His care here in the home of your forefathers. Good-night!” After an absent-minded kiss from father I was dismissed with a Sanskrit blessing from somewhere in the valley of the Euphrates up into my bedroom in the valley of Old Harpeth.