Round Anvil Rock. Nancy Huston Banks
the everyday life of Cedar House. They had begun with Ruth's coming more than seventeen years before. As a baby she had been rocked in a cradle such as never before had been seen in the wilderness—a very gem of wonderful carving and inlaid work from Spain. As a little child she had been dressed—as no little one of the wild wood ever had been before—in the finest fabrics and the daintiest needlework from the looms and convents of France. Very strange things may become familiar through use. The simple people of Cedar House and their rude neighbors were well used to all this. They had seen the beautiful blue-eyed baby grow to be a more beautiful child, and the child to a most beautiful maiden, and always surrounded by the greatest refinement and luxury that love and means could bring into the wilderness. Naturally enough they now found nothing to wonder at, in the daily presence of this radiant young figure among them.
It was only for an instant that the girl and boy stood thus unseen on the threshold of Cedar House, looking into the great room. Philip Alston saw them almost at once. He had been watching and waiting for Ruth, as he always was when she was out of his sight even for a moment. He sprang up, quickly and alertly, like a strong young man, and went to meet her with his gallant air. She held up her cheek smilingly; he bent and kissed it, and taking her hand with his grand bow, led her across the room. The judge and his nephew also arose, as they always did when she came in or went out. The judge did this unconsciously, without thinking, and scarcely knowing that he did do it; for he was a plain man, rather awkward and very absent-minded, and deeply absorbed in the study of his profession. William Pressley did it with deliberate intention and self-consciousness, as he did everything that he deemed fitting. It was his nature to give grave thought to the least thing that he said or did. It was his sincere conviction that the smallest matter affecting himself was of infinitely greater importance than the greatest that could possibly concern any one else. There are plenty of people who believe this as sincerely as he believed it, but there are few who show the belief with his candor. When he now stood up to place a chair for Ruth beside his own, he did the simple service as if the critical eyes of the world had been upon him. And his manner was so consciously correct that no one observed that the chair which he gave her was not so comfortable as his own. He was uncommonly good-looking, also, and tall and shapely, yet there was something about his full figure—that vague, indescribable something—which unmistakably marks the lack of virility in mind or body, no matter how large or handsome a man may be. He stood for a moment after Ruth was seated, and then, seeing that Philip Alston was about to lift a candle-stand which was heaped with parcels, he went to aid him, and the two men together set the little table before her. She looked at it with soft, excited cries of surprise and delight, instantly divining that the unopened parcels and sealed boxes contained more of the gifts which her foster-father was constantly lavishing upon her. He smiled down at her beaming face and dancing eyes, and then taking out his pocket-knife he cut the cords and removed the covers of the boxes. As the wrappings fell away, there was a shimmer of dazzling tissues, silver and gold.
"Oh! oh!" she cried.
"Just a few pretty trifles, my dear," he said. "You like them?"
"Like them!"
Repeating his words she sprang up, and running round the candle-stand, stood on the very tips of her toes so that she might throw her arms about his neck. He bent his head to meet her upturned face, and if ever tenderness shone in a man's pale, grave face, it shone then in his. If ever love—pure and unselfish—beamed from a man's eyes, it was beaming now from those looking down in the girl's face. His tender gaze followed her fondly as she went back to the candle-stand and began to examine each article again more than once and with lingering and growing delight. She found new beauties every moment, and pointed them out to the three men and the boy who were now gathered around her. She called the ladies also, over and over, but they did not come, although they cast many glances at the candle-stand.
Miss Penelope was engaged in making the coffee for supper; and while she did not consider the making of the coffee for supper quite so vital a matter as the making of the coffee for breakfast, she still could not think of leaving the hearth under any inducement so long as the coffee-pot sat on its trivet above the glowing coals. The widow Broadnax stirred among her cushions once or twice, as if almost on the point of trying to get out of her chair. She was fonder of finery than her half-sister was, and she would have liked very much to see these beautiful things nearer. But she was still fonder of her own ease than of finery, and it was really a great deal of trouble to get out of her deep, broad low chair. And then she never moved or took her eyes off her half-sister while that energetic lady was engaged in making the coffee.
Knowing the ladies' ways, Ruth did not expect them to come. She was quite satisfied to have the men share her pleasure in the presents. They were looking at her and not at the gifts lying heaped on the candle-stand, but she did not notice that. She gave the judge a priceless piece of lace to hold. He took it with the awkward, helpless embarrassment of a manly man handling a woman's delicate belongings—the awkwardness that goes straight to a woman's heart, because she sees and feels its true reverence—a reverence just as plain and just as sweet to the simplest country girl as to the wisest woman of the world. The perception of it is a matter of intuition, not one of experience. The least experienced woman instantly distrusts the man who can touch her garments with ease or composure. Ruth's gay young voice broke into a sweet chime of delighted laughter when the judge seized the airy bit of lace as if it had been the heaviest and hottest of crowbars. She laughed again when she looked at his face. He had an odd trick of lifting one of his eyebrows very high and at an acute angle when perplexed or ill at ease. This eccentric left eyebrow—now quite wedge-shaped—had gone up almost to the edge of his tousled gray hair. Ruth patted his great clumsy hands with her little deft ones.
"Well, I'll have to take to the woods, if there's no other way of escape," said the judge, making his greatest threat.
"You dear!" she said, running her arm through his and giving it a little squeeze. "That's right. Hold it tight—be careful, or it will break. Here, William," piling the young man's arms full of delicately tinted gauze, "this is a sunset cloud. And these," casting lengths of exquisite tissue over the boy's shoulder, "these are the mists of the dawn, David—all silvery white and golden rose and jewelled blue. But—oh! oh!—these are the loveliest of all! A pair of slippers in orange-blossom kid, spangled with silver! Look at them! Just look, everybody!"
Holding them in her hand she ran round the table again to throw her arms about Philip Alston's neck the second time, like a happy, excited child. The little white slippers went up with her arms and touched his cheek. And then he drew them down, and clasping her slender wrists, held her out before him and looked at her with fond, smiling eyes.
"I don't believe that the Empress Josephine has any prettier slippers than those," he said. "I ordered the prettiest and the finest in Paris."
"Who fetched all these things?" the judge broke in, with something like a sudden realization of the number and the value of the gifts.
"Oh, a friend of mine," responded Philip Alston, carelessly, and without turning his head—"a friend who has many ships constantly going and coming between New Orleans and France. He orders anything I wish; and when it comes to him, he sends it on to me by the first flatboat cordelled up the river."
"What is his name?" asked the judge, with a persistence very uncommon in him.
Philip Alston turned now and glanced at him with an easy, almost bantering smile.
"I don't like to tell you his name, because you—with a good many other honestly mistaken people—are most unjustly prejudiced against him. And then you know well enough that I am speaking of my respected and trusted friend, Monsieur Jean Lafitte."
The judge dropped the lace as if it had burnt his hand. He went back to his seat by the window in silence. He sat down heavily and looked at Philip Alston in perplexity, rubbing his great shock of rough grizzled hair the wrong way as he always did when worried. His thoughts were plainly to be read on his open, rugged face. This liking of Philip Alston's for a man under a national ban was an old subject of worry and perplexity. Yet Alston was always as frank and as firm about it as he had been just now, and the judge's confidence in him was absolute. Robert Knox's own character must have changed greatly before he could have doubted