Part 8 (2/2)
The men, too, who bought and sold them, were fuller nourished and fuller voiced. It was as if they never whispered and had never had to talk in soft caution. Upon himself from time to time he felt amused glances, as though he, like his bony steers, stood branded to the eye with the ineradicable mark of something strayed in from a land of poverty.
But when eventually the cattle had been sold, Saul took him on to the capitol of the State, and there, on the twelfth of December, he stood, with a heart that hammered his ribs, in a great crowd before the state house and gazed up at the platform upon which the choice of his own people was being inaugurated as Governor.
Boone was dazzled by the gold-laced uniforms of all the colonels on the retiring executive's staff, and as he turned away, in the amber light of the winter afternoon, his soul was all but satiated with the heady intoxication of full living.
On a brilliantly frosted morning, when the weed stalks by the roadside were crystal-rimmed, and the sky was an illimitable arch of blue sparkle, he trudged at Saul's side along a white turnpike between smooth stone walls and well-kept fences. Yet for all his enthusiasm of admiration, a new sense of misgiving and vague trouble began to settle heavily at his heart.
No one, along the way, halted to ”meet an' make their manners.”
Vehicles, drawn by horses that lifted their hocks and knees high, pa.s.sed swiftly and without greeting. The threadbare poorness of his clothes, a thing of which he had never before been conscious, now uncomfortably obtruded itself upon realization. At home, where every man was poor, there had been no sense of inferiority, but here was a regime of disquieting contrasts.
When they at last turned through a gate with stone pillars, he caught sight of a long maple and oak-flanked avenue, and at its end a great brick house. Against the age-tempered facade stood out the trim of white paint and the dignity of tall, fluted columns. He marvelled that Saul Fulton had been able in so short a time to buy himself such a palace.
But while he still mulled over his wonderment in silence, Saul led him by a detour around the mansion and its ivory-white out-buildings, and continued through back pastures and fields, disfigured by black and sharp tobacco stubble. Boone followed past fodder-racks and pig-sties, until they brought up at a square, two-roomed house with blank, unpainted walls, set in a small yard as barren as those of the hills, but unrelieved by any background of laurel or forest. About this untempered starkness of habitation stretched empty fields, snow-patched and desolate, and the boy's face dropped as he heard his kinsman's announcement, ”This hyar's whar I dwells at.”
”Who--who dwells over yon at t'other house?” came Boone's rather timid query. ”Ther huge brick one, with them big white poles runnin' up in front.”
Saul laughed with a rasping note in his voice, ”Hit b'longs ter Colonel Tom Wallifarro, ther lawyer, but he don't dwell thar hisself, save only now an' then.”
Fulton paused, and his face took on the unpleasant churlishness of cla.s.s hatred. ”Ther whole kit and kaboodle of 'em will be hyar soon, though.
They all comes back fer Christmas, an' holds dancin' parties, and carousin's, d.a.m.n 'em!”
A seriously puzzled expression clouded the boy's eyes, and he asked simply, ”Hain't ye friendly with 'em, Saul?”
”No,” was the short rejoinder, ”I hain't friendly with no rich lowlander that holds scorn fer an honest man jest because he's poor.”
On subsequent occasions when Boone pa.s.sed the ”great house” it seemed almost as quiet as though it were totally untenanted, but with the approach of Christmas it awoke from its sleep of inactivity.
The young mountaineer was trudging along one day through a gracious woodland, which even, in the starkness of winter, hinted at the n.o.bility that summer leaf.a.ge must give to its parklike s.p.a.ces. His way carried him close to the paddocks flanking the ample barns, and he could see that the house windows were ruddy from inner hearth fires, and decked with holly wreaths.
In the paddocks themselves were a dozen persons, all opulent of seeming, and what interested the pa.s.ser-by, even more than the people, were the high-headed, gingerly stepping horses that were being led out by negro boys for their inspection.
In the group Boone recognized the man whom Asa had identified that day in Marlin as Mr. Masters, a ”mine boss,” and the gentleman who had come with him out of the mountain hotel. The boy surmised that this latter must be Colonel Tom Wallifarro himself, the owner of all these acres.
There was a small girl too, whom Masters called ”daughter.” Boone had for girls the fine disdain of his age, and this one he guessed to be some four or five years younger than himself. But she was unlike any other he had ever seen, and it puzzled him that so much attention should be squandered on a ”gal-child,” though he acknowledged to himself--”but she's plum purty.” He went by with a casual glance and a high chin, but in his brain whirled many puzzling thoughts, springing from a first glimpse of wealth.
CHAPTER VII
It was Christmas eve night, and General Basil Prince, who had hurriedly changed to evening dress after his arrival by a late train, halted for a moment at the stairhead to look down. On his distinguished face played a quiet smile. In these rapidly changing times, pride of lineage and deference for tradition were things less openly voiced than in other days which he could remember.
Probably that was as it should be, he reflected, yet an elderly fellow might enjoy the fragrance of old lavender or the bouquet of memory's vintage.
When he came here to the country house of his friend Wallifarro, it seemed to him that he stepped back into those days when gracious ceremonies held and dancers trod the measured figures of the minuet.
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