A MEETING OF OLD FRIENDS
Habersham's men had proved exceedingly timid when it came to the business of threshing the woods for Appleweight, whom they regarded with a new awe, now that he had vanished so mysteriously. They had searched the woods guardedly, but the narrow paths that led away into the dim fastnesses of Ardsley were forbidding, and these men were not without their superstitions. They had awaited for years an opportunity to strike at the Appleweight faction; they had at last taken their shot, and had seemingly brought down their bird; but their lack of spirit in retrieving the game had been their undoing. They had only aroused their most formidable enemy, who would undoubtedly lose no time in seeking revenge. They were a dolorous band who, after warily beating the woods, dispersed in the small hours of the morning, having found nothing but Appleweight's wool hat, which only added to their mystification.
"We ought to have taken him away on the run," said Habersham bitterly, as he and Griswold discussed the matter on the veranda of the prosecutor's house and watched the coming of the dawn. "I didn't realize that those fellows lived in such mortal terror of the old man; but they refused to make off with him until the last of his friends had got well out of the way. I ought to have had more sense myself than to have expected the old fox to sit tied up like a calf ready for market. We had all his friends accounted for—those that weren't at prayer meeting were marked down somewhere else, and we had a line flung pretty well round the church. Appleweight's deliverance must have come from somewhere inside the Ardmore property. Perhaps the game warden picked him up."
"Perhaps the Indians captured him," suggested Griswold, yawning, "or maybe some Martian came down on a parachute and hauled him up. Or, as scarlet fever is raging at Mr. Ardmore's castle,"—and his tone was icy—"Appleweight was probably seized all of a sudden, and broke away in his delirium. Let's go to bed."
At eight o'clock he and Habersham rode into Turner Court House, and Griswold went at once to the inn to change his clothes. No further steps could be taken until some definite report was received as to Appleweight's whereabouts. The men who had attempted the outlaw's capture had returned to their farms, and were most demurely cultivating the soil. Griswold was thoroughly disgusted at the ridiculous failure of Habersham's plans, and not less severe upon himself for failing to push matters to a conclusion the moment the outlaw was caught, instead of hanging back to await the safe dispersion of the Mount Nebo congregation.
It had been the most puerile transaction possible, and he was aware that a report of it, which he must wire at once to Miss Barbara Osborne, would not impress that young woman with his capacity or trustworthiness in difficult occasions. The iron that had already entered into his soul drove deeper. He had ordered a fresh horse, and was resolved to return to Mount Nebo Church for a personal study of the ground in broad daylight.
As he crossed the musty parlor of the little hotel, to his great astonishment Miss Osborne's black Phœbe, stationed where her eyes ranged the whole lower floor of the inn, drew attention to herself in an elaborate courtesy.
"Miss Barb'ra wish me t' say she done come heah on business, and she like fo' to see yo' all right away. She done bring huh seddle, and war a-gwine ridin' twell you come back. She's a-gittin' ready, and I'll go tell huh you done come. She got a heap o' trubble, thet young missis, so she hev," and the black woman's pursed lips seemed to imply that Professor Griswold was in some measure responsible for Miss Osborne's difficulties.
As he stared out into the street a negro brought a horse bearing a better saddle than Mingo County had ever boasted, and hitched it near the horse he had secured for himself. An instant later he heard a quick step above, and Miss Osborne, sedately followed by the black woman, came down-stairs. She smiled and greeted him cordially, but there was trouble in her brown eyes.
"I didn't warn you of my coming. I didn't want to be a nuisance to you; but there's a new—a most unaccountable perplexity. It doesn't seem right to burden you with it—you have already been so kind about helping me; but I dare not turn to our oldest friends—I have been afraid to trust father's friends at all since Mr. Bosworth acted so traitorously."
"My time is entirely at your service, Miss Osborne; but I have a shameful report to make of myself. I must tell you how miserably I have failed, before you trust me any further. We—that is to say, the prosecuting attorney of this county and a party he got together of Appleweight's enemies—caught the outlaw last night—took him with the greatest ease—but he got away from us! It was all my fault, and I'm deeply disgusted with myself!"
He described the capture and the subsequent mysterious disappearance of Appleweight, and confessed the obvious necessity for great caution in further attempts to take the outlaw, now that he was on guard. Barbara laughed reassuringly at the end of the story.
"Those men must have felt funny when they went back to get the prisoner and found that he had gone up into the air. But there's a new feature of the case that's more serious than the loss of this man—" and the trouble again possessed her eyes.
"Well, it's better not to have our problems too simple. Any lawyer can win an easy case—though I seem to have lost my first one for you," he added penitently.
She made no reply, but drew from her purse a cutting from a newspaper and handed it to him.
"That's from last night's Columbia Vidette, which is very hostile to my father."
He was already running over the heavily leaded column that set forth without equivocation the fact that Governor Osborne had not been in Columbia since he went to New Orleans. It scouted the story that he was abroad in the state on official business connected with the Appleweight case—the yarn which Griswold had forced upon the friendly reporter at the telegraph office in Columbia. The governor of a state, the Vidette went on to elaborate, could not vanish without leaving some trace of himself, and a Vidette representative had traced the steps of Governor Osborne from New Orleans until—the italics are the Vidette's—he had again entered South Carolina under cover of night and for purposes which, for the honor of the state, the Vidette hesitated to disclose.
The writer of the article had exhausted the possibilities of gentle suggestion and vague innuendo in an effort to create an impression of mystery and to pique curiosity as to further developments, which were promised at any hour. Griswold's wrath was aroused, not so much against the newspaper, which he assumed had some fire for its smothered trifle of smoke, but against the governor of South Carolina himself, who was causing the finest and noblest girl in the world infinite anxiety and pain.
"The thing is preposterous," he said lightly. "The idea that your father would attempt to enter his own state surreptitiously is inconceivable in these days when public men are denied all privacy, and when it's any man's right to deceive the press if he finds it essential to his own comfort and peace; but the intimation that your father is in South Carolina for any dishonorable purpose is preposterous. One thing, however, is certain, Miss Osborne, and that is that we must produce your father at the earliest possible moment."
"But"—and Barbara hesitated, and her eyes, near tears as they were, wrought great havoc in Griswold's soul—"but father must not be found until this Appleweight matter is settled. You understand without making me speak the words—that he might not exactly view the matter as we do."
It was a painful subject; and the fact that she was driven by sheer force of circumstances to appeal to him, a stranger, to aid her to perform a public service in her father's name rallied all his good impulses to her standard. It was too delicate a matter for discussion; it was a thing to be ignored; and he assumed at once a lighter tone.
"Come! We must solve the riddle of the lost prisoner at once, and your father will undoubtedly give an excellent account of himself when he gets ready. Meanwhile the fiction that he is personally carrying the war into the Appleweight country must be maintained, and I shall step to the railway station and wire the Columbia newspaper in his name that he is in Mingo County on the trail of the outlaws."
The messages were composed by their joint efforts at the station, with not so much haste but that an associate professor of admiralty, twenty-nine years old, could defer in the most trifling matters to the superior literary taste of a girl of twenty whose brown eyes were very pleasant to meet in moments of uncertainty and appeal.
He signed the messages Charles Osborne, Governor, with a flourish indicative of the increased confidence and daring which Miss Osborne's arrival had brought to the situation.
"And now," said Griswold, as they rode through the meager streets of Turner's, "we will go to Mount Nebo Church and see what we can learn of Appleweight's disappearance."
"The North Carolina papers are making a great deal of Governor Dangerfield's activity in trying to put down outlawry on the border," said Barbara. "Marked copies of the newspapers are pouring into papa's office. I can but hold Mr. Bosworth responsible for that. We may count upon it that he will do all in his power to annoy us"—and then, as Griswold looked at her quickly, he was aware that she had colored and averted her eyes; and while, as a lawyer, he was aware that words of two letters might be provocative of endless litigation of the bitterest sort, he had never known before that us, in itself the homeliest of words, could cause so sweet a distress. It seemed that an interval of several years passed before either spoke again.
"We are quite near the estate of your friend, Mr. Ardmore, aren't we?" asked Barbara presently.
"I fancy we are," replied Griswold, but with a tone so coldly at variance with his previous cordial references to the master of Ardsley that Barbara looked at him inquiringly.
"I'm sorry that I should have given you the impression, Miss Osborne, that Mr. Ardmore and I are friends, as I undoubtedly did at Columbia. He has, for some unaccountable reason, cut my acquaintance in a manner so unlike him that I do not pretend to explain it; nor, I may add, is it of the least importance."
"I was a little surprised," returned Barbara, with truly feminine instinct for mingling in the balm of consolation the bitterest and most poisonous herbs, "that you should have had for a friend a man who frankly follows girls whose appearance he fancies. Even Mr. Ardmore's democratic enthusiasm for the down-trodden laundry girl does not wholly mitigate the winking episode."
"He had, only a few days ago, invited me to visit him, though I had been to his house so often that the obscurest servant knew that I was privileged even beyond the members of Mr. Ardmore's own family in my freedom of the place. When I saw that his house would be a convenient point from which to study the Appleweight situation, I wired him that I was on the way, and to my utter amazement he replied that he could not entertain me—that scarlet fever was epidemic on the estate—on those almost uncounted acres!"
And with a gulp and a mist in his eyes, Griswold drew rein and pointed, from a hill that had now borne them to a considerable height, toward Ardsley itself, dreamily basking in the bright morning sunlight within its cincture of hills, meadows and forest.
"I never saw the place before! It's perfectly splendid!" cried Barbara, forgetting that Griswold must be gazing upon it with the eyes of an exile viewing grim, forbidding battlements that once hailed him in welcome.
"It's one of the most interesting houses in America," observed Griswold, who strove at all times to be just.
"There's a flag flying—I can't make out what it is," said Barbara.
"It's probably to give warning of the scarlet fever; it would be like Ardy to do that. But we must hurry on to Mount Nebo."
He knew the ways of Ardsley thoroughly; better, in fact, than its owner ever had in old times; but in his anger at Ardmore he would not set foot on the estate if he could possibly avoid doing so in reaching the scene of the night's contretemps. He found without difficulty the trail taken by Habersham's men, and in due course of time they left their horses a short distance from the church and proceeded on foot.
"It seems all the stupider in broad daylight," said Griswold, after he had explained just what had occurred, and how the captors, in their superstitious awe of Appleweight, had been afraid to carry him off the moment they were sure of him, but had slipped back among their fellows to wait until the coast was perfectly clear. To ease his deep chagrin Barbara laughed a good deal at the occurrence as they tramped over the scene discussing it. They went into the woods back of the church, where Griswold began to exercise his reasoning powers.
"Some one must have come in from this direction and freed the man and taken him away," he declared.
He knelt and marked the hoof-prints where Appleweight had been left tied; but the grass here was much trampled, and Griswold was misled by the fact, not knowing that news of Appleweight's strange disappearance had passed among the outlaw's friends by the swift telegraphy of the border, and that the whole neighborhood had been threshed over hours before. It might have been some small consolation to Griswold had he known that Appleweight's friends and accomplices were as much at a loss to know what had become of the chieftain as the men who had tried so ineffectually to kidnap him. From the appearance of the trampled grass many men had taken a hand in releasing the prisoner, and this impression did not clarify matters for Griswold.
"Where does this path lead?" asked Barbara.
"This is Ardsley land here, this side of the church, and that trail leads on, if I remember, to the main Ardsley highway, with which various other roads are connected—many miles in all. It's inconceivable that the deliverers of this outlaw should have taken him into the estate, where a sort of police system is maintained by the forestry corps. I don't at all make it out."
He went off to explore the heavy woods on each side of the trail that led into Ardsley, but without result. When he came gloomily back he found that in his absence Barbara had followed the bridle-path for a considerable distance, and she held out to him a diminutive pocket handkerchief, which had evidently been snatched away from its owner—so Barbara explained—by a low-hanging branch of an oak, and flung into a blackberry bush, where she had found it. It was a trifle, indeed, the slightest bit of linen, which they held between them by its four corners and gravely inspected.
"Feminine, beyond a doubt," pronounced Griswold sagely.
"It's a good handkerchief, and here are two initials worked in the corner that may tell us something—'G. D.' It probably belongs to some guest at Ardsley. And there's a very faint suggestion of orris—it's a city handkerchief," said Barbara with finality, "but it has suffered a trifle in the laundry, as this edge is the least bit out of drawing from careless ironing."
"And I should say, from a certain crispness it still retains, that it hasn't been in the forest long. It hasn't been rained on, at any rate," added Griswold.
"But even the handkerchief doesn't tell us anything," said Barbara, spreading it out, "except that some woman visitor has ridden here within a few days and played drop the handkerchief with herself or somebody else to us unknown."
"She may have been a scarlet fever patient from Ardsley; you'd better have a care!" And Griswold's tone was bitter.
"I'm not afraid; and as I have never been so near Ardsley before, I should like to ride in and steal a glimpse. There's little danger of meeting the lord of the manor, I suppose, or any of his guests at this hour, and we need not go near the house."
He saw that she was really curious, and it was not in his heart to refuse her, so they followed the bridle-path through the cool forest, and came in due course to the clearing where Jerry had first confessed herself lost, and thereafter had suffered the captured outlaw to point her the way home.
"The timber has been cut here since my last visit, but I remember the bridle-paths very well. They all reach the highroad of the estate ultimately. We may safely take this one, which has been the most used and which climbs a hill that gives a fine outlook."
The path he chose had really been beaten into better condition than either of the others, and they rode side by side now. A deer feeding on a grassy slope raised its head and stared at them, and a fox scampered wildly before them. It seemed that they were shut in from all the world, these two, who but a few days before had never seen each other, and it was a relief to him to find that she threw off her troubles and became more animated and cheerful than he had yet seen her. His comments on her mount, which was sorry enough, were amusing; and she paused now and then to peer into the tops of the tallest trees, under the pretense that Appleweight had probably reverted to the primordial and might be found at any minute in one of the branches above them. Her dark green habit, and the soft hat to match, with its little feather thrust into the side, spoke for real usage; and the gauntleted hand that swung lightly at her side inadvertently brushed his own once—and he knew that this must not happen again! When their eyes met it was with frank confidence on her part, and it seemed to him that they were very old friends, and that they had been riding through this forest, or one identical with it, since the world began. It is thus that a man with any imagination feels first about a woman who begins to interest him—that there was never any beginning to their acquaintance that can be reckoned as time and experience are measured, but that he has known her for countless years; and if there be a poetic vein in him, he will indulge in such fancies as that he has seen her as a priestess of Aphrodite in the long ago, dreaming upon the temple steps; or that he has watched her skipping pebbles upon the violet storied sea against a hazy background of cities long crumbled into dust. Such fancies as these are a part of love's gentle madness, and luckier than she knows is the girl who awakens in a lover this eager idealization. If he can turn a verse for her in which she is added to the sacred Nine, personifying all sweet, gentle and gracious things, so much the better.
Just what he, on the other hand, may mean to her; just what form of deification he evokes in her, he can never know; for the women who write of such matters have never been those who are sincere or worth heeding, and they never will be, so long as woman's heart remains what it has been from the beginning—far-hidden, and filled with incommunicable secret beliefs and longings, and tremulous with fears that are beyond man's power to understand.
Griswold had missed the white rose that he had begun to associate with Barbara, and he grew suddenly daring and spoke of it.
"You haven't your rose to-day."
"Oh, I'm beyond the source of supply! I have a young friend, a girl, who makes her living as a florist—not a purely commercial enterprise, for she experiments and develops new varieties, and is quite wonderful; and that white rose is her own creation—it is becoming well known. She named it for me, and she sends me at least one every day—she says it's my royalty—if that's what you lawyers call that sort of thing."
"We lawyers rarely have anything so interesting as that to apply the word to! So that rose is the Barbara?" and it gave him a feeling of recklessness to find himself speaking her name aloud. "There are large conservatories on the estate, over there somewhere; I might risk the scarlet fever by attacking the gardener and demanding a Barbara for you."
"I'm afraid my little flower hasn't attained to the grandeur of Ardsley," she laughed. "But pray, where are we?"
They had reached the highroad much sooner than Griswold had expected, and he checked his horse abruptly, remembering that he was persona non grata on this soil.
"We must go back; I mustn't be seen here. The workmen are scattered all about the place, and they all know me."
"Oh, just a little farther! I want to see the towers of the castle!"
If she had asked him to jump into the sea he would not have hesitated; and he was so happy at being with her that his heart sang defiance to Ardmore and the splendors of Ardsley.
They were riding now toward the red bungalow, where he had often sprawled on the broad benches and chaffed with Ardmore for hours at a time. Tea was served here sometimes when there were guests at the house; and Griswold wondered just who were included in the party that his quondam friend was entertaining, and how Mrs. Atchison was progressing in her efforts to effect a match between Daisy Waters and her brother.
The drives were nearly all open to the public, so that by the letter of the law he was no intruder; but beyond the bungalow he must not go. Sobered by the thought of his breach with Ardmore, he resolved not to pass the bungalow whose red roof was now in sight.
"It's like a fairy place, and I feel that there can be no end to it," Barbara was saying. "But it isn't kind to urge you in. We certainly are doing nothing to find Appleweight, and it must be nearly noon."
It was just then—he vividly recalls the moment—as Griswold felt in his waistcoat for his watch—that Miss Jerry Dangerfield, with Thomas Ardmore at her side, galloped into view. They were racing madly, like irresponsible children, and bore boisterously down upon the two pilgrims.
Jerry and Ardmore, hatless and warm, were pardonably indignant at thus being arrested in their flight, and the master of Ardsley, feeling for once the dignity of his proprietorship, broke out stormily.
"I would have you know—I would have you know—" he roared, and then his voice failed him. He stared; he spluttered; he busied himself with his horse, which was dancing in eagerness to resume the race. He quieted the beast, which nevertheless arched and pawed like a war-horse, and then the master of Ardsley bawled:
"Grissy! I say, Grissy!"
Miss Osborne and Professor Griswold, on their drooping Mingo County nondescripts, made a tame picture before Ardmore and his fair companion on their Ardsley hunters. The daughter of the governor of South Carolina looked upon the daughter of the governor of North Carolina with high disdain, and it need hardly be said that this feeling, as expressed by glacial glances, was evenly reciprocal, and that in the contemptuous upward tilt of two charming chins the nicest judgment would have been necessary to any fair opinion as to which state had the better argument.
The associate professor of admiralty was known as a ready debater, and he quickly returned his former friend's salutation, and in much the contumelious tone he would have used in withering an adversary before a jury.
"Pardon me, but are you one of the employees here?"
"Why, Grissy, old man, don't look at me like that! How did you—"
"I owe your master an apology for riding upon his property at a time when pestilence is giving you cause for so much concern. The death-rate from scarlet fever is deplorably high—"
"Oh, Grissy!" cried Ardmore.
"You have addressed me familiarly, by a nickname sometimes used by intimate friends, though I can't for the life of me recall you. I want you to know that I am here in an official capacity, on an errand for the state of South Carolina."
Miss Dangerfield's chin, which had dropped a trifle, pointed again into the blue ether.
"You will pardon me," she said, "but an agent of the state of South Carolina is far exceeding his powers when he intrudes upon North Carolina soil."
"The state of South Carolina does what it pleases and goes where it likes," declared Miss Barbara Osborne warmly, whereupon Mr. Ardmore, at a glance from his coadjutor, waxed righteously indignant.
"It's one thing, sir, for you to ride in here as a sight-seer, but quite another for you to come representing an unfriendly state. You will please choose which view of the matter I shall take, and I shall act accordingly."
Griswold's companion spoke to him earnestly in a low tone for a moment, and then Griswold addressed Ardmore incisively.
"I don't know what you pretend to be, sir; but it may interest you to know that I am the governor of South Carolina!"
"And this gentleman," cried Jerry, pointing to Ardmore with her riding-crop, "though his hair is mussed and his scarf visibly untied, is none other than the governor of North Carolina, and he is not only on his own property, but in the sovereign state of which he is the chief executive."
Professor Griswold lifted his hat with the least flourish.
"I congratulate the state of North Carolina on having reposed authority in hands so capable. If this young lady is correct, sir, I will serve official notice on you that I have reason to believe that a person named Appleweight, a fugitive from justice, is hiding on your property and in your state, and I now formally demand that you surrender him forthwith."
"If I may introduce myself," interposed Jerry, "I will say to you that my name is Geraldine Dangerfield, and that this Appleweight person is now at Mr. Ardmore's house."
"I suppose," replied Miss Osborne with gentle irony, "that he has the pink parlor and leads the conversation at table."
"You are quite mistaken," replied Ardmore; "but if it would afford you any satisfaction to see the outlaw you may look upon him in my wine cellar, where, only an hour ago, I left him sitting on a case of Chateau Bizet '82. My further intentions touching this scoundrelly South Carolinian I need not now disclose; but I give you warning that the Appleweight issue will soon and forever be terminated and in a manner that will greatly redound to the credit and the glory of the Old North State."
Professor Griswold's hand went to his mustache with a gesture that smote Ardmore, for he knew that it hid that inscrutable smile that had always baffled him.
"I trust," said Griswold, "that the prisoner, whom we can not for a moment concede to be the real Appleweight, will not be exposed to scarlet fever, pending a settlement of this matter. It is my understanding that the Bizet '82 is a fraudulent vintage that has never been nearer France than Paris, Illinois, and if the prisoner in your cellar drinks of it I shall hold you officially responsible for the consequences. And now, I have the honor to bid you both good morning."
He and Barbara swung their horses round and retraced their way, leaving Ardmore and Jerry gazing after them.
When the shabby beasts from the stable at Turner Court House had borne Miss Osborne and Griswold out of sight beyond the bungalow, Ardmore turned blankly to Jerry.
"Have I gone blind or anything? Unless I'm crazy that was dear old Grissy, but who is that girl?"
"That is Miss Barbara Osborne, and I hope she has learned such a lesson that she will not be snippy to me any more, if she is the president-general of the Daughters of the Seminole War."
"But where do you suppose she found Grissy?"
"I don't know, I'm sure; nor, Mr. Ardmore, do I care."
"He said he represented the state of South Carolina—do you suppose the governor has really employed him?"
"I do not," said Jerry emphatically; "for he appears intelligent, and intelligence is something that would never appeal to Governor Osborne. It is quite possible," mused Jerry aloud, "that Miss Osborne's father has disappeared like mine, and that she is running his office with Mr. Griswold's aid. If so, we shall probably have some fun before we get through with this."
"If that's true we shall have more than fun!" exclaimed Ardmore, thoroughly aroused. "You don't know Grissy. He's the smartest man alive, and if he's running this Appleweight case for Governor Osborne, he'll keep us guessing. Why did I ever send him that scarlet fever telegram, anyhow? He'll fight harder than ever for that and all I wanted was to keep him away until we had got all through with this business here so I could show him what a great man I had been and how I had been equal to an opportunity when it offered."
"I wish you to remember, Mr. Ardmore, that you still have your opportunity, and that I expect you to carry this matter through to a safe conclusion and to the honor of the Old North State."
"I have no intention of failing, Miss Dangerfield;" and with this they turned and rode slowly back toward the house.
Professor Griswold and Miss Osborne were silent until the forest again shut them in.
Then, in a sequestered spot, Griswold suddenly threw up his head and laughed long and loud.
"It doesn't strike me as being so amusing," remarked Miss Osborne. "They have Appleweight in their wine cellar and I don't see for the life of me how we are going to get him out."
"What's funny, Miss Osborne, is Ardy—that he and I should be pitted against each other in a thing of this kind is too utterly ridiculous. Ardy acting as governor of North Carolina beats anything that ever happened on this continent. But how do you suppose he ever met Miss Dangerfield, who certainly is a self-contained young woman?"
"The answer to that riddle is so simple," replied Miss Osborne, "that I am amazed that you fail to see it for yourself. Miss Dangerfield is undoubtedly the girl with the winking eye."
"Oh, no!" protested Griswold.
"I don't hesitate to announce that as a fact. Miss Geraldine Dangerfield, beyond any question, is the young lady whom Mr. Ardmore, your knight errant friend, went forth for to seek. Just how they met we shall perhaps learn later on. But just now it seems rather necessary for us to adopt some plan of action, unless you feel that you do not wish to oppose your friend."