CHAPTER XXII
FAREWELL VISIT TO MONDREER
It was a long day’s ride, and it was dark when their train ran into the little station where it stopped for half a minute.
The large party got out, and they found a much larger party collected to meet them.
There was old Tom Grandiere—as the master of Oldfield was beginning to be called—with an ox cart to carry his tribe of sons and daughters home.
There was William Elk, with an old barouche which he had brought to meet his niece.
There was Miss Sibby Bayard in her mule cart, come to fetch Roland.
Lastly, there was Mrs. Anglesea, in the capacious break, driven by Jacob, come to fetch the whole Force family home from the station to Mondreer.
And there were such hearty, cordial greetings as are seldom heard in this world.
“Welcome home, neighbors!”
“We have missed you!”
“Thank Heaven you have come back!”
And so on and so on! All speaking at once, so that it was difficult to tell who said what, or to reply distinctly to anything.
Yet the Forces all responded in the most cordial manner to these effusive greetings, in which Mrs. Force and Odalite detected an undertone of sadness and sympathy which both mother and daughter understood too well.
“They have heard of our new humiliation, although we have never written of it! Yes, they have all heard of it, though no one alludes to it,” was the unuttered thought of mother and daughter.
“Lord’s sake, ole man, hoist them children up here and get in! Don’t stand palavering with them people all night! I’m gwine to drive you all home myself. I only brought him for show! I wouldn’t trust him to take us home safe over bad roads in the dark,” said Mrs. Anglesea, from her seat on the box beside the coachman.
“Well, my girls and boys, have you been so spoiled by your gay city life that you will never be content with your dull, country home again?” demanded Thomas Grandiere, as he helped his big daughters to tumble up into the ox cart.
“Oh, dad, it was perfectly delightful! But we are glad to get home and see you, for all that!” answered Sophie.
“‘There’s no place like home,’”
sentimentally sighed Peggy. And all the other sisters and the brothers chimed in with her.
“Washington is well enough, but they are all too indifferent about the crops ever to amount to much, I think,” said Sam Grandiere, and his brother Ned seconded the motion. And so that party waved a last adieu to the Forces and drove off.
“Your mother and your aunt are both at our house, Rosemary, and so I came to fetch you over there,” said William Elk, as he helped his little mite of a niece into the old barouche. “You don’t grow a bit, child! Are you never going to be a woman?” he further inquired, as he settled her into her seat.
“Nature puts her finest essences into her tiniest receptacles, Uncle Elk!” said Roland, who called everybody else’s uncle his own.
But William Elk had driven off without receiving the benefit of the young man’s words.
“Roland, come here and get into this cart afore this here brute goes to sleep and drops down. There’s a time for all things, sez I, and the time to stand staring after a young gal, sez I, isn’t nine o’clock at night when there’s an ole ’oman and wicious mule on a cart waitin’ for you, and a mighty dark night and a rough road afore you, sez I!” called Miss Sibby, from her seat.
“All right, aunty, I’m coming.”
And the young fellow jumped into the cart, took the reins from the old lady, and started the mule at a speed that made the animal cock his ears and meditate rebellion.
By this time Mr. and Mrs. Force, their three daughters and Leonidas were seated in the break.
Mrs. Anglesea was on the box, driving. This she so insisted on doing that there was no preventing her except by enacting a scene.
“Jake’s getting old, and blind, and stupid. I’m not going to trust my precious neck to him, you bet! I have lost a good deal, but I want to keep my head on my shoulders,” she had said, as she took the reins from Jake, who immediately folded his arms, closed his eyes and resigned himself to sleep.
“You had better let me drive if you are afraid to trust Jake, Mrs. Anglesea,” suggested Mr. Force.
“You!” said the lady from Wild Cats’, in a tone of ineffable contempt. “Not much! I’d a heap rather trust Jake than you! Why, ole man, you never were a good whip since I knowed you, and you’ve been out of practice three years! Sit still and make yourself comfortable, and I’ll land you safe at Mondreer. Old Luce will have a comfortable tea there for you, and strawberry shortcake, too. Think of strawberries on the twelfth of April! But I raised ’em under glass. And so my beat wasn’t dead, after all! And I in mourning for him ever since the fourteenth of February! Well, my beat beats all! I shall never believe him dead until I see him strung up by a hangman and cut up by the doctors—of which I live in hopes! No, you needn’t worry. Jake’s fast asleep, and he wouldn’t hear thunder, nor even the dinner horn, much less my talk!”
“How did you hear that Col. Anglesea had turned up again?” inquired Mr. Force.
“Why, Lord! ole man, it’s all over the whole country. You couldn’t cork up and seal down news like that! It would bu’st the bottle! I believe some one fetched it down from Washington to the Calvert House, and then it got all over the country; and Lord love you, Jake heard it at the post office and fetched it home to the house. And then—when Beever got your letter, and not a word was said about the wedding, and Miss Grandiere got two—one from you and one from Rosemary—and nothing said neither about no brides nor grooms, we felt to see how it was. And now there’s lynching parties sworn in all over the neighborhood to put an end to that beat if ever he dares to show his face here again. Oh! the whole neighborhood is up in arms, I tell you!”
“I am very sorry my good neighbors’ sympathy demonstrates itself in that way,” said Mr. Force.
“You can’t help it, though!” triumphantly exclaimed the lady from the diggings, as she gave the off horse a sharp cut that started the whole team in a gallop, and jerked all the party out of their seats and into them again.
“As a magistrate, it is my bounden duty to help it,” returned Mr. Force, as soon as he recovered from the jolt.
“Look here, ole man! You take a fool’s advice and lay low and say nothing when lynch law is going round seeking whom it may devour! For when it has feasted on one wictim it licks its chops and looks round for another, and wouldn’t mind gobbling up a magistrate or two any more than you would so many oysters! Leastways that is how it was at Wild Cats’. And I tell you, our boys out there woudn’t have let a beat like him cumber the face of the earth twenty-four hours after his first performance, if they could have got hold of him. It’s a word and a blow with them, and the blow comes first! Now, for goodness’ sake, do stop talking, ole man! I can’t listen to you and drive down this steep hill at the same time without danger of upsetting! Whoa, Jessie! What y’re ’bout, Jack? Stea—dee!”
And the lady on the box gave her whole attention to taking her team safely down Chincapin Hill and across the bridge over Chincapin Creek.
“Oh! how glad I am to see the dear old woods and the creek and the bridge once more!” said little Elva, fervently.
“‘See!’ Why, you can’t see a mite of it! It is as dark here as the bottom of a shaft at midnight. No moon. And what light the stars might give hid by the meeting of the trees overhead. ‘See,’ indeed! There’s imagination for you!” replied Mrs. Anglesea.
“Well, anyhow I know we are on the dear old bridge, and going over the creek, because I can hear the sound of the wheels on the planks and the gurgle of the water running through the rocks and stones,” deprecatingly replied Elva.
“Why don’t you say ecstatically—
“‘Hail! blest scenes of my childhood!’
That’s the way to go on if you mean to do it up brown!” chaffed Wynnette.
“Oh, how can you be such a mocker! Are you not glad to get home?” pleaded Elva.
“Rather; but I’m not in raptures over it.”
“Look here, young uns! Stop talking; you distract me. I can’t listen and drive at the same time. And if you will keep on jawing you’ll get upset. These roads are awful bad washed by the spring rains, and if we get home safe it will be all owing to my good driving! Only you mustn’t distract me by jawing!” said Mrs. Anglesea. And having silenced every tongue but her own, she drove on slowly by the light of the carriage lanterns, which only shed a little stream directly in front of her, talking all the time about the negligence of the supervisors and the carelessness of the farmers in suffering the roads to be in such a condition at that time of the year.
“This could never a been the case if you’d been home, ole man! You’d a been after them supervisors with a sharp stick, you would! But, Lord! the don’t-care-ishness of the men about here!” she concluded, as she drew up at the first broad gate across the road leading into the Mondreer grounds.
Her passengers thought, but did not say, that if the lady on the box could not listen and drive at the same time, she could certainly drive and talk pretty continuously at the same time.
“Here, you lazy nigger, Jake! Wake up and jump down and open this here gate!” exclaimed Mrs. Anglesea, giving the old sleeper such a sharp grip and hard shake that he yelled before he woke and said he dreamed a limb of a tree had caught him and knocked him out of his seat.
However, he soon came to a sense of the situation, half climbed and half tumbled down to the ground and opened the gate to let the break pass through.
The house was now in sight and lighted up from garret to basement.
“Oh, how pretty!” cried Elva.
And Wynnette mocked her good-humoredly.
“I told Luce to do it and leave all the window shutters open so you could see through. Lord! tallow candles are cheap enough, ’specially when you make ’em yourself. And there was an awful lot of beef tallow last killing to render down. I couldn’t tell you how many candles I run—about five hundred, I reckon! Well, here we are at the house, and——Oh, Lord! Jake, jump down and hold that dog, or he’ll break his chain and jump through the carriage windows!” cried Mrs. Anglesea, as they stopped before the house.
Indeed, Joshua was making “the welkin ring” with his joyous barks and his frantic efforts to get at the returning friends, whose presence he had scented.
“Let him loose this instant, Jake! Unchain him, I say!” exclaimed Wynnette. And without waiting for her orders to be obeyed, she sprang from the carriage, fell upon the dog’s neck, and covered him with caresses.
“Oh, you dear, good, true, trusty old fellow! To know us all again after so many years! To be so glad to see us! And to forgive us at once for going away and leaving you behind. You would never have left us, would you, my dog? Ah! dogs are a great deal more faithful than human beings.”
While Wynnette with her own hands unloosed the chain, the other members of the family alighted from the break.
And Joshua, released from restraint, dashed into the midst of the group, barking in frantic raptures, and darting from one to another trying to turn himself into a half a dozen dogs to worship at once a half a dozen false gods in the form of his returning friends.
They all responded to Joshua’s demonstrations, and then entered the house, closely followed by the dog, who did not mean to lose sight of them again.
In the lighted hall they found all the family servants gathered to welcome them home.
“Oh, dear mist’ess, we-dem all frought as you-dem had forsook us forever and ever, amen!” said Luce, bursting into tears, as she took and kissed the hand her mistress offered.