In Her Own Right. Scott John Reed
family – and a gentle one as well. ‘The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the daring.’”
There was enough of the South Carolinian of the Lowlands in Croyden, to appreciate the Past and to honor it. He might not know much concerning Hepplewhite nor the beauty of his lines and carving, and he might be wofully ignorant of his own ancestors, having been bred in a State far removed from their nativity, for he had never given a thought to the old things, whether of furniture or of forebears – they were of the inanimate; his world had to do only with the living and what was incidental to it. The Eternal Now was the Fetich and the God of Northumberland, all it knew and all it lived for – and he, with every one else, had worshipped at its shrine.
It was different here, it seemed! and the spirit of his long dead mother, with her heritage of aristocratic lineage, called to him, stirring him strangely, and his appreciation, that was sleeping and not dead, came slowly back to life. The men in buff-and-blue, in small-clothes, in gray, the old commissions, the savour of the past that clung around them, were working their due. For no man of culture and refinement – nay, indeed, if he have but their veneer – can stand in the presence of an honorable past, of ancestors distinguished and respected, whether they be his or another’s, and be unmoved.
“And you say there are none to inherit all these things?” Croyden exclaimed. “Didn’t the original Duval leave children?”
The agent shook his head. “There was but one son to each generation, sir – and with the Colonel there was none.”
“Then, having succeeded to them by right of purchase, and with no better right outstanding, it falls to me to see that they are not shamed by the new owner. Their portraits shall remain undisturbed either by collectors or by myself. Moreover, I’ll look up my own ancestors. I’ve got some, down in South Carolina and up in Massachusetts, and if their portraits be in existence, I’ll add reproductions to keep the Duvals company. Ancestors by inheritance and ancestors by purchase. The two of them ought to keep me straight, don’t you think?” he said, with a smile.
IV
PARMENTER’S BEQUEST
Croyden, with Dick as guide and old Mose as forerunner and shutter-opener, went through the house, even unto the garret.
As in the downstairs, he found it immaculate. Josephine had kept everything as though the Colonel himself were in presence. The bed linen, the coverlids, the quilts, the blankets were packed in trunks, the table-linen and china in drawers and closets. None of them was new – practically the entire furnishing antedated 1830, and much of them 1800 – except that, here and there, a few old rugs of oriental weaves, relieved the bareness of the hardwood floors.
The one concession to modernism was a bath-room, but its tin tub and painted iron wash-stand, with the plumbing concealed by wainscoting, proclaimed it, alas, of relatively ancient date. And, for a moment, Croyden contrasted it with the shower, the porcelain, and the tile, of his Northumberland quarters, and shivered, ever so slightly. It would be the hardest to get used to, he thought. As yet, he did not know the isolation of the long, interminably long, winter evenings, with absolutely nothing to do and no place to go – and no one who could understand.
At length, when they were ready to retrace their steps to the lower floor, old Mose had disappeared.
“Gone to tell his wife that the new master has come,” said Dick. “Let us go out to the kitchen.”
And there they found her – bustling around, making the fire, her head tied up in a bandana, her sleeves rolled to the shoulders. She turned, as they entered, and dropped them an old-fashioned curtsy.
“Josephine!” said Dick, “here is Mr. Croyden, the new master. Can you cook for him, as well as you did for Colonel Duval?”
“Survent, marster,” she said to Croyden, with another curtsy – then, to the agent, “Kin I cooks, Marster Dick! Kin I cooks? Sut’n’y, I kin. Don’ yo t’inks dis nigger’s forgot – jest yo waits, Marster Croyden, I shows yo, seh, sho’ nuf – jest gives me a little time to get my han’ in, seh.”
“You won’t need much time,” Dick commented. “The Colonel considered her very satisfactory, sir, very satisfactory, indeed. And he was a competent judge, sir, a very competent judge.”
“Oh, we’ll get along,” said Croyden, with a smile at Josephine. “If you could please Colonel Duval, you will more than please me.”
“Thankee, seh!” she replied, bobbing down again. “I sho’ tries, seh.”
“Have you had any experience with negro servants?” Dick asked, as they returned to the library.
“No,” Croyden responded: “I have always lived at a Club.”
“Well, Mose and his wife are of the old times – you can trust them, thoroughly, but there is one thing you’ll have to remember, sir: they are nothing but overgrown children, and you’ll have to discipline them accordingly. They don’t know what it is to be impertinent, sir; they have their faults, but they are always respectful.”
“Can I rely on them to do the buying?”
“I think so, sir, the Colonel did, I know. If you wish, I’ll send you a list of the various stores, and all you need do is to pay the bills. Is there anything else I can do now, sir?”
“Nothing,” said Croyden. “And thank you very much for all you have done.”
“How about your baggage – can I send it out? No trouble, sir, I assure you, no trouble. I’ll just give your checks to the drayman, as I pass. By the way, sir, you’ll want the telephone in, of course. I’ll notify the Company at once. And you needn’t fear to speak to your neighbors; they will take it as it’s meant, sir. The next on the left is Major Borden’s, and this, on the right, is Captain Tilghman’s, and across the way is Captain Lashiel’s, and Captain Carrington’s, and the house yonder, with the huge oaks in front, is Major Markoe’s.”
“Sort of a military settlement,” smiled Croyden.
“Yes, sir – some of them earned their title in the war, and some of them in the militia and some just inherited it from their pas. Sort of handed down in the family, sir. The men will call on you, promptly, too. I shouldn’t wonder some of them will be over this evening.”
Croyden thought instantly of the girl he had seen coming out of the Borden place, and who had directed him to Clarendon.
“Would it be safe to speak to the good-looking girls, too – those who are my neighbors?” he asked, with a sly smile.
“Certainly, sir; if you tell them your name – and don’t try to flirt with them,” Dick added, with a laugh. “Yonder is one, now – Miss Carrington,” nodding toward the far side of the street.
Croyden turned. – It was she! the girl of the blue-black hair and slender silken ankles.
“She’s Captain Carrington’s granddaughter,” Dick went on with the Southerner’s love for the definite in genealogy. “Her father and mother both died when she was a little tot, sir, and they – that is, the grandparents, sir – raised her. That’s the Carrington place she’s turning in at. Ah – ”
The girl glanced across and, recognizing Dick (and, it must be admitted, her Clarendon inquirer as well), nodded.
Both men took off their hats. But Croyden noticed that the older man could teach him much in the way it should be done. He did it shortly, sharply, in the city way; Dick, slowly, deferentially, as though it were an especial privilege to uncover to her.
“Miss Carrington is a beauty!” Croyden exclaimed, looking after her. “Are there more like her, in Hampton?”
“I’m too old, sir, to be a competent judge,” returned Dick, “but I should say we have several who trot in the same class. I mean, sir – ”
“I understand!” laughed Croyden. “It’s no disrespect in a Marylander, I take it, when he compares the ladies with his race-horses.”
“It’s not, sir! At least,