"But, Anne – "
"I didn't interrupt you," she reminded him. "My idea of a real man is one who doesn't talk timidly about gorges – whether they're two hundred years wide, as you call it, or not. Napoleon wouldn't have been let into a kitchen door at court – so he came in through the front way with a triumphal arch built over it. He knocked down barriers, and got what he wanted."
"Then – " his voice rang out suddenly – "then if I can ever get up to where you stand I won't be 'poor white trash' to you?"
She shook her head and her eyes glowed with invincible spirit. "You'll be a man – that wasn't fainthearted," she told him honestly. "One that was brave enough to live his own life as I mean to live my own."
"Anne," he said fervently, "you asked me if I'd miss anything but the hills. I'll miss you– like – all hell – because I love you like that."
They were on a mountain top, with no one to see them. They were almost children and inexperienced. They thought that they could lay down their plans and build their lives in accordance, with no deflection of time or circumstance. A few moments later they stood flushed with the intoxication of that miracle that makes other miracles pallid. The girl's breath came fast and her cheeks were pinkly flushed. The boy's heart hammered, and the leagues of outspread landscape seemed a reeling, whirling but ecstatically beautiful confusion. Their eyes held in a silent caress, and for them both all subsequent things were to be dated from that moment when he had impulsively taken her in his arms and she had returned his first kiss.
CHAPTER XIX
General Basil Prince sat in his law office one murky December morning of the year 1903. It was an office which bespoke the attorney of the older generation, and about it hung the air of an unadorned workship. If one compared it with the room in the same building where young Morgan Wallifarro worked at a flat-topped mahogany table, one found the difference between Spartan simplicity and sybarite elegance. But over one book case hung an ancient and battered cavalry sword, a relic of the days when the General had ridden with the "wizards of the saddle and the sabre."
Just now he was, for the second time, reading a letter which seemed to hold for him a peculiar interest.
"Dear General," it ran:
"Your invitation to come to Louisville and meet at your table that coterie of intimates of whom you have so often spoken is one that tempts me strongly – and yet I must decline.
"You know that my name is not McCalloway – and you do not know what it is. I think I made myself clear on that subject when you waived the circumstance that I am a person living in hermitage, because my life has not escaped clouding. You generously accepted my unsupported statement that no actual guilt tarnishes the name which I no longer use – yet despite my eagerness to know those friends of yours, those gentlemen who appeal so strongly to my imagination and admiration, I could not, in justice to you or to myself, permit you to foist me on them under an assumed name. I have resolved upon retirement and must stand to my resolution. The discovery of my actual identity would be painful to me and social life might endanger that.
"I'll not deny that in the loneliness here, particularly when the boy is absent, there are times when, for the dinner conversation of gentlemen and ladies, I would almost pawn my hope of salvation. There are other times, and many, when for the feel of a sabre hilt in my hand, for the command of a brigade, or even a regiment, I would almost offer my blade for hire – almost but not quite.
"I must, however, content myself with my experiment; my wolf-cub.
"You write of my kindness to him, but my dear General, it is the other way about. It is he who has made my hermitage endurable, and filled in the empty spaces of my life. My fantastic idea of making him the American who starts the pioneer and ends the modern, begins to assume the colour of plausibility.
"I now look forward with something like dread to the time when he must go out into a wider world. For then I cannot follow him. I shall have reached the end of my tutorship. I do not think I can then endure this place without him – but there are others as secluded.
"But my dear General, the very cordial tone of your letters emboldens me to ask a favour (and it is a large one), in this connection. When he has finished his course at college I should like to have him read law in Louisville. That will take him into a new phase of the development I have planned. He will need strong counsel and true friends there, for he will still be the pioneer with the rough bark on him, coming into a land of culture, and, though he will never confess it, he will feel the sting of class distinctions and financial contrasts.
"There he will see what rapid transitions have left of the old South, and despite the many changes, there still survives much of its spirit. Its fragrant bouquet, its fine traditions, are not yet gone. God willing, I hope he will even go further than that, and later know the national phases as well as the sectional – but that, of course, lies on the knees of the gods."
General Prince laid down the letter and sat gazing thoughtfully at the scabbarded sabre on the wall. Then he rose from his chair and went along the corridors to a suite legended, "Wallifarro, Banks and Wallifarro." The General paused to smile, for the last name had been freshly lettered there, and he knew that it meant a hope fulfilled to his old friend the Colonel. His son's name was on the door, and his son was in the firm. But it was to the private office of Colonel Tom that he went, and the Colonel shoved back a volume of decisions to smile his welcome.
"Tom," began the General, "I have a letter here that I want you to read. I may be violating a confidence – but I think the writer would trust my judgment in such a matter."
Tom Wallifarro read the sheets of evenly penned chirography, and as he handed them back he said musingly:
"Under the circumstances, of course, it would not be fair to ask if you have any guess as to who McCalloway is – or was. He struck me as a gentleman of extraordinary interest – He is a man who has known distinction."
"That's why I came in this morning, Tom. I want you to know him better – and to co-operate with me, if you will, about the boy. Since the mountain can't come to Mahomet – "
"We are to go there?" came the understanding response, and Basil Prince nodded.
"Precisely. I wanted you and one or two others of our friends to go down there. I had in mind an idea that may be foolish – fantastic, even, for a lot of old fellows like ourselves – but none the less interesting. I want to give the chap a dinner in his own house."
Colonel Wallifarro smiled delightedly as he gave his ready sanction to the plan. "Count me in, General, and call on me whenever you need me."
It was not until January that the surprise party came to pass, and Basil Prince and Tom Wallifarro had entered into their arrangements with all the zest of college boys sharing a secret. Out of an idea of simple beginnings grew elaborations as the matter developed, until there was indeed a dash of the fantastic in the whole matter, and a touch, too, of pathos. Because of McCalloway's admission that at times his hunger for the refinements of life became a positive nostalgia, the plotters resolved to stage, for that one evening, within the walls of hewn logs, an environment full of paradox.
Results followed fast. A hamper was filled from the cellars of the Pendennis Club. Old hams appeared, cured by private recipes that had become traditions. Napery and silver – even glass – came out of sideboards to be packed for a strange journey. All these things were consigned long in advance to Larry Masters at Marlin Town, where railway traffic ended and "jolt wagon" transportation began. Aunt Judy Fugate, celebrated in her day and generation as a cook, became an accessory before the fact. In her house only a "whoop and a holler" distant from that of McCalloway's, she received, with a bursting importance and a vast secrecy, a store of supplies smuggled hither far more cautiously than it had ever been needful to smuggle "blockade licker."
Upon one pivotal point hinged the success of the entire conspiracy.
Larry Masters must persuade McCalloway to visit him for a full day before the date set, and must go back with him at the proper time. The transformation of a log house into a banquet hall demands time and non-interference. But there was no default in Masters's co-operation, and on the appointed evening McCalloway and Larry rode up to the door of the house and dismounted. Then the soldier halted by his fence-line and spoke in a puzzled tone:
"Strange – very strange – that there should be lights burning inside. I've been away forty-eight hours and more. I dare say Aunt Judy has happened in. She has a key to the place."
Larry Masters hazarded no explanatory suggestion. The vacuous expression upon his countenance was, perhaps, a shade overdone, but he followed his host across the small yard to his door.
On the threshold McCalloway halted again in a paralysed bewilderment. Perhaps he doubted his own sanity for a moment, because of what he saw within.
The centre of the room was filled with a table, not rough, as was his own, but snowy with damask, and asparkle with glass and silver, under the softened light of many candles. So the householder stood bewildered, pressing a hand against his forehead, and as he did so several gentlemen rose from chairs before his own blazing hearth. When they turned to greet him, he noticed, with bewilderment, that they were all in evening dress.
Basil Prince came smilingly around the table with an outstretched hand, and an enlightening voice. "Since I am the original conspirator, sir, I think I ought to explain. We are a few Mahomets who have come to the mountain. Our designs upon you embrace nothing more hostile than a dinner party."
For a moment Victor McCalloway, for years now a recluse with itching memories of a life that had been athrob with action and vivid with colour, stood seeking to command his voice. His throat worked spasmodically, and into the eyes that had on occasion been flint-hard with sternness came a mist that he could not deny. He sought to welcome them – and failed. Rarely had he been so profoundly touched, and all he succeeded in putting into words, and that in an unnatural voice, was: "Gentlemen – you must pardon me – if I fail to receive you properly – I have no evening clothes."
But their laughter broke the tension, and while he shook hands around, thinking what difficulties must of necessity have been met in this gracious display of cordiality, Moses, the negro butler from the Wallifarro household, appeared from the kitchen door, bearing a tray of cocktails.
It was not until after two keenly effervescent hours of talk, laughter and dining, when the cigars had been lighted, that Prince came to his feet.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I am not going to pledge the man who is both our host and guest of honour, because I prefer to propose a sentiment we can all drink, standing, including himself – I give you the success of his gallant experiment – the Boy – Boone Wellver – 'A toast to the native-born!'"
They rose amid the sound of chairs scraping back, and once more McCalloway felt the contraction of his throat and the dimness in his eyes.
"Gentlemen," he stammered, "I am grateful… I think the boy is going to be an American – not only a hillsman – not even only a Kentuckian or a Southerner – though God knows either would be a proud enough title – but an American who blends and fuses these fine elements. That, at all events, is my hope and effort."
He sat down hurriedly – and yet in other days he had spoken with polished ease at tables where distinguished men and women were his fellow diners – and it was then that Tom Wallifarro rose.
"This was not to be a formal affair of set speeches," he announced in a conversational tone, "but there is one more sentiment without which we would rise leaving the essential thing unsaid. Some one has called these mountain folk our 'contemporary ancestors' – men of the past living in our day. This lad is, in that sense, of an older age. When he goes into the world, he will need such advisors of the newer age as he has had here in Mr. McCalloway – or at least pale imitations of Mr. McCalloway, whose place no one can fill. We are here this evening for two pleasant purposes. To dine with our friend, who could not come to us, and to found an informal order. The Boone who actually lived two centuries ago was the godfather of Kentucky.
"Gentlemen, I give you the order of our own founding tonight: The Godfathers of Boone."
It was of course by coincidence, only, that the climax of that evening's gathering should have been capped as it was. Probability would have brought the last guests, whom no one there had expected, at any other time, but perhaps the threads of destiny do not after all run haphazard. Possibly it could only be into such a fantastic pattern that they could ever have been woven.
At all events it was that night they came: the two short men, with narrow eyes, set in swarthy Oriental faces – such as those hills had not before seen.
There was a shout from the night; the customary mountain voice raised from afar as the guide who had brought these visitors halloed from the roadway: "I'm Omer Maggard … an' I'm guidin' a couple of outlanders, thet wants ter see ye."
McCalloway went to the door and opened it, and because it was late the guide turned back without crossing the threshold.
But the two men who had employed his services to conduct them through the night and along the thicketed roads entered gravely, and though they too must have felt the irrational contrasts of the picture there, their inscrutable almond eyes manifested no surprise.
They were Japanese, and, as both bowed from the hips, one inquired in unimpeachable English, "You are the Honourable Victor McCalloway?"
If the former soldier had found it impossible to keep the mists of emotion out of his pupils a little while ago, such was no longer the case. His glance was now as stern in its inquisitorial questioning as steel. It was not necessary that these gentlemen should state their mission, to inform him that their coming carried a threat for his incognito, but he answered evenly:
"I am so called."
"I have the honour to present the Count Oku … and myself Itokai."
CHAPTER XX
When general introductions had followed, the Count Itokai smiled, with a flash of white and strong teeth.
"We have come to present a certain matter to you – but we find you entertaining guests – so the business can wait."
The courtesy of manner and the precision of inflection had the perfection of Japanese officialdom, but McCalloway's response succeeded in blending with an equal politeness a note of unmistakable aloofness.
"As you wish, gentlemen, though there is no matter concerning myself which might not be discussed in the presence of these friends."
"Assuredly!" This time it was Oku who spoke. "It is unfortunate that we are not at liberty to be more outspoken. The matter is one of certain … information … which we hope you can give us … and which is official: not personal with ourselves."
Masters made the move. "I'll pop out and see that your horses are stabled. Gentlemen – " he turned to the others – "it's a fine frosty night … shall we finish our cigars in the open air?"
With deprecating apology the two newcomers watched them go, and when the place had been vacated save for the three, McCalloway turned and bowed his guests to chairs before the hearth.
It had been a strange picture before. It was stranger now, augmented by these two squat figures with dark faces, high cheek bones, and wiry black hair: Japanese diplomats sitting before a Cumberland mountain hearth-stone.
"Excellency," began the Count Oku promptly, "I am authorized by my government to proffer you a commission upon the staff of the army of Nippon."
McCalloway's eyes narrowed. He had not seated himself but had preferred to remain non-committally standing, and now his figure stiffened and his lips set themselves.
"Count," he said almost curtly, "before we talk at all, you must be candid with me. If I choose to live in solitude, any intrusion upon that privacy should be with my consent. May I inquire how the name of Victor McCalloway has chanced to become known and of interest to the Government of Japan?"
The diplomatic agent bowed.
"The question is in point, Excellency. Unhappily I am unable to answer it. What is known to my government I cannot say. I can only relate what has been delegated to me."
"I take it you can, at least, do that."
"We have been told that a gentleman who for reasons of his own prefers to use the name of Victor McCalloway, had formerly a title more widely known."
This time McCalloway's voice was sharply edged.
"However that may be, I have now only one name, Victor McCalloway."
"That we entirely understand. Some few years back my government, in an effort to encourage Europeanizing the Chinese army, attempted to enlist your honourable services. Is that not true?"
McCalloway nodded but, as he did so, anger blazed hotly in his eyes.
"To know more about a gentleman, in private life, than he cares to state, constitutes a grave discourtesy, sirs. Whatever activities my soldiering has included, I have never been a mercenary. I have fought only under my own flag and my sword is not for hire!"
The Orientals rose and again they bowed, but this time the voice of the Count Oku dropped away its soft sheath of diplomatic suavity and, though it remained low of pitch, it carried now a ring of purpose and positiveness.
"The officer who fights for a cause is not a soldier of fortune, Excellency. The flag of the Rising Sun has a cause."
"Japan is at peace with the world. Military service can be for a cause only when it is active."
"Yes, Japan is at peace with the world – now!" The voice came sharply, almost sibilantly, with the aspirates of the race. "I am authorized to state to you that service with our high command will none the less be active – and before many months have passed. I am further authorized to state to you that the foe will be a traditional enemy of Great Britain: that our interests will run parallel with those of the British Empire – If you take service under the Sun flag, Excellency, it will be against foes of the Cross of St. George."
The two Japanese stood very erect, their beady eyes keenly agleam. Slowly, and subconsciously, Victor McCalloway too drew his shoulders back, as though he were reviewing a division. He was hearing the Russo-Japanese War forecast weeks before it burst like shrapnel on an astonished world.
"Gentlemen," he said gravely, "you must grant me leisure for thought. This is a most serious matter."
A half hour later, with cigars glowing, the guests from Japan and the guests from Louisville sat about the hearth, but on none of the faces was there any trace of the unusual or of a knowledge of great secrets.
In all truth, Mahomet had come to the mountain.
Boone had not long returned from his Christmas vacation. So when he came into his dormitory room from his classes one afternoon and found his patron awaiting him there with a grave face, he was somewhat mystified, until with a soldier's precision McCalloway came to his point.
"My boy," he said, "I have come here to have a very serious talk with you."
Boone's face, which had flushed into pleasurable surprise at the sight of his visitor, fell at the gravity of the voice. He guessed at once that this was the preface to such an announcement as he always dreaded in secret, and his own words came heavily.
"I reckon you mean – that you aim to – go away."
"I aim to talk to you about going away."
Boone rallied his sinking spirits as he announced with a creditable counterfeit of cheerfulness, "All right, sir; I'm listening."
For a while the older man talked on. He was sitting in the plain room of the dormitory – and his gaze was fixed off across the snow-patched grounds, and the scattered buildings of the university.
He did not often look at the boy, who had grown into his heart so deeply that the idea of a parting carried a barb for both. He thought that Boone could discuss this matter with greater ease if the eyes of another did not lay upon him the necessity of maintaining a stoical self-repression.
McCalloway for the first time traced out in full detail the plan that he had conceived for Boone: the fantastic dream of his pilgrimage in one generation along the transitional road his youthful nation had travelled since its birth. As he listened, the young man's eyes kindled with imagination and gratitude difficult to express. He had been, he thought, ambitious to a fault, but for him his preceptor had been far more ambitious. The horizons of his aspiration widened under such confidence, but he could only say brokenly, "You're setting me a mighty big task, sir. If I can do any part of it, I'll owe it all to you."
"We aren't here to compliment each other, my boy," replied McCalloway bluntly. "But if I've made a mistake in my judgment, I am not yet prepared to admit it. You owe me nothing. I was alone, without family, without ties. I was here with a broken life – and you gave me renewed interest. But that couldn't have gone on, I think, if you hadn't been in the main what I thought you – if you hadn't had in you the makings of a man and a gentleman."
He broke off and cleared his throat loudly.
Boone, too, found the moment a trying one, and he thrust his hands deep in his trousers pockets and said nothing. The uprights that supported his life's structure seemed, just then, withdrawn without warning.
"You know, when I was offered service in China, I declined – and you know why," McCalloway reminded him. "I should do the same thing today, except that now I think you can stand on your own legs. I take it you no longer need me in the same sense that you did then – and the call that comes to me is not an unworthy one."
"I reckon, sir – it's military?"
"It's at least advisory, in the military sense. My boy, it pains me not to be able to take you into my full confidence – but I can't. I can't even tell you where I am going."
"You – " the question hung a moment on the next words – "you aim to come back – sometime?"
"God granting me a safe conclusion, I shall come back … and the thought of you will be with me in my absence … the confidence in you … the hope for you."
There was again a long silence, then McCalloway said:
"I came here to discuss it with you. I have declined to give a positive answer until we could do that."
Boone wheeled, and his head came up. He felt suddenly promoted to the responsible status of a counsellor. There was now no tremor in his voice, except the thrill of his young and straightforward courage.
"You say it's not unworthy work, sir. There can't be any question. You've got to go. If you hesitated, I'd know full well I was spoiling your life."
Later, side by side, they tramped the muddy turnpikes between the rich acres of farms where thoroughbreds were foaled and trained.
"I have talked with Colonel Wallifarro," announced the soldier at length. "Next fall he wants you to come to Louisville and finish reading law in his office."
But the boy shook his head. Here, confronting a great loneliness, he was feeling the contrast between the land, whose children called it God's country, and his own meagre hills, where the creeks bore such names as Pestilence and Hell-fer-sartain.
"I couldn't go to Louisville, sir. I couldn't pay my board or buy decent clothes there. I've got that little patch of ground up there and the cabin on it, though. I'd aimed to go back there – I'll soon be of age, now – and seek to get elected clerk of the court."
"Why clerk of the court? Why not the legislature?"
The boy grinned.
"The legislature was what I aimed at – until I read the constitution. About the only job I'm not too young for is the clerkship."
McCalloway nodded.
"I see no reason why you shouldn't make that race, but you'll be a fitter servant of your people for knowing a bit more of the world. As to the money, I've arranged that – though you'll have to live frugally. There will be to your credit, in bank, enough to keep you for a year or two – and if I shouldn't get back – Colonel Wallifarro has my will. I want you to live at my house when you're in the mountains – and look after things – my small personal effects."
But for that plan of financing his future, Boone had a stout refusal, until the soldier stopped in the road and laid a hand on his shoulder. "I have never had a son," he said simply. "I have always wanted one. Will you refuse me?"
It was a very painful day for both of them, but when at last Boone stood under the railroad shed and saw the man who was his idol wave his hat from the rear platform, he waved his own in return, and smiled the twisted smile of stiff lips.
On the ninth of February, as the boy glanced at the morning paper before he started for his first class, he saw headlines that brought a creep to his scalp, and the hand that held the paper trembled.
Admiral Togo's fleet was steaming, with decks cleared for action, off Port Arthur – already a Japanese torpedo-boat flotilla had attacked and battered the Russian cruisers that crouched like grim watchdogs at the harbour's entrance – already the gray sea-monsters flying the sun-flag had ripped out their cannonading challenge to the guns of the coast batteries!
There had yet been no declaration of war – and the world, which had wearied of the old story of unsuccessful treaty negotiations, rubbed astonished eyes to learn that overnight a volcano of war had burst into eruption – that lava-spilling for which the Empire of Nippon had been building for a silent but determined decade.
Boone was late for his classes that day – and so distrait and inattentive that his instructors thought he must be ill. To himself he was saying, with that ardour that martial tidings bring to young pulses, "Why couldn't he have taken me along with him?"