A Man of Honor Part 8

"I confess I do not exactly understand your figure of speech, Cousin Sarah Ann! What do you mean by hanging up my hat?"

"Didn't you ever hear that before? It's a common saying here, when a man marries a girl with a good plantation and a 'dead daddy,' so there can't be any doubt about the land being her's--they say he's got nothing to do but walk in and hang up his hat."

This explanation was lucid enough without doubt, but it, and indeed the entire conversation, was extremely disagreeable to Robert, who was sufficiently old-fas.h.i.+oned to think that marriage was a holy thing, and he, being a man of good taste, disliked to hear holy things lightly spoken of. He was relieved, therefore, by Maj. Pagebrook's entrance, and not long afterwards he was invited to go up to the blue-room, the way to which he knew perfectly well, to rest awhile before dinner.

In the blue-room he found Ewing, with a headache, lying on a lounge. The youth had purposely gone thither, probably, in order that his meeting with Robert might be a private one, for meet him he must, as he very well knew, at dinner if not before.

Robert sat down by him and held his head as tenderly as a woman could have done, and speaking gently said:

"I am very sorry to find you suffering, Ewing. You must ride with me after dinner, and the air will relieve your head, I hope."

The boy actually burst into tears, and presently, recovering from the paroxysm, said:

"I didn't expect that, Cousin Robert. Those are the first kind words I've heard to-day. Mother has called me hard names all the morning."

"Your _mother_!" exclaimed Robert, thrown off his guard by surprise, for he would never have thought of questioning the boy on such a subject.

"O yes! she always does. If she'd ever give me any credit when I do try to do right, I reckon I would try harder. But she calls me a drunkard and gambler whenever there is the least excuse for it; and if I don't do anything wrong she says I am pokey and a'n't got any spirit. She told me this morning she didn't mean to leave me anything in her will, because I'd squander it. You know all pa's property is in her name now. I got mad at last and told her I knew she couldn't keep me from getting my share, because nearly half of everything here belonged to Grandfather Taylor and is willed to us children when we come of age. She didn't know I knew that, and when I told her----"

"Come, Ewing, don't talk about that. You have no right to tell me such things. Bathe your head now, and hold it up as a man should. You are responsible to yourself for yourself, and it is your duty to make a man of yourself--such a man as you need not be ashamed of. If you think you do not receive the recognition you ought for your efforts to do well, you should remember that things are not perfectly adjusted in this world, so far at least as we can understand them. The reward of manliness is the manliness itself; and it is well worth living for too, even though n.o.body recognizes its existence but yourself. Of that, however, there need be no fear. People will know you, sooner or later, precisely as you are."

Robert had other encouraging things to say to the youth, and finally said:

"Now, Ewing, I shall ask you to make no promises which you may not be strong enough to keep; but if you will promise me to make an earnest effort to let whisky and cards alone, and to make a man of yourself, refusing to be led by other people, I will talk with your father and get him to agree never to mention the past again, but to aid you with every encouragement in his power for the future."

"Why, Cousin Robert, pa never says anything to me. When ma scolds he just goes out of the house, and he don't come in again till he's obliged to. It a'n't pa at all, it's ma, and it a'n't any use to talk to her.

I'll be of age pretty soon, and then I mean to take my share of grandpa's estate, and put it into money and go clear away from here."

Robert saw that it would be idle to remonstrate with the young man at present, and equally idle to interfere with the domestic governmental system practiced by Cousin Sarah Ann. He devoted himself, therefore, to the task of getting Ewing to bathe his head; and after a little time the two went down to dinner, Ewing thinking Robert the only real friend he could claim.

His head aching worse after dinner than before, he declined Robert's invitation to go to s.h.i.+rley, and our friend rode back alone.

CHAPTER XIII.

_Concerning the Rivulets of Blue Blood._

Mr. Robert was heartily glad to get away from the uncomfortable presence of Cousin Sarah Ann, and yet it can not be said that our young gentleman was buoyant of spirit as he rode from The Oaks to s.h.i.+rley. Ewing's case had depressed him, and Cousin Sarah Ann had depressed him still further.

His confidence in woman nature was shaken. His ideas on the subject of women had been for the most part evolved--wrought out, _a priori_, from his mother as a premise. He had known all the time that not every woman was his mother's equal, if indeed any woman was; he had observed that sometimes vanity and weakness and in one case, as we know, faithlessness entered into the composition of women, but he had never conceived of such a compound of "envy, hatred and malice, and all uncharitableness"

as his cousin Sarah Ann certainly was; and as he applied the quotation mentally he was constrained also to utter the pet.i.tion which accompanies it in the litany--"Good Lord deliver us!" This woman was a mystery to him. She not only shocked but she puzzled him. How anybody could consent to be just such a person as she was was wholly incomprehensible.

Her departures from the right line of true womanhood were so entirely purposeless that he could trace them to no logical starting-point. He could conceive of no possible training or experience which ought to result in such a character as hers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RIVULETS OF BLUE BLOOD.]

After puzzling himself over this human problem for half an hour he gave it up, and straightway began to work at another. He asked himself how it could be possible that Cousin Sudie should be attracted by Dr. Charley Harrison. Possibly the reader has had occasion to work at a similar problem in his time, and if so I need not tell him how incapable it proved of solution. Of the fact Robert was now convinced, and the fact annoyed him. It annoyed him too that he could not account for the fact; and then it annoyed him still more to know that he could be annoyed at all in the case, for he was perfectly sure--or nearly so--that he was not himself in love with his little friend at s.h.i.+rley. And yet he felt a strange yearning to battle in some way with young Harrison, and to conquer him. He wanted to beat the man at something, it mattered little what, and to triumph over him. But he did not allow himself even mentally to formulate this feeling. If he had he would have discovered its injustice, and cast it from him as unworthy. His instinct warned him of this, and so he refused to put his wish into form lest he should thereby lose the opportunity of entertaining it.

With thoughts like these the young man rode homewards, and naturally enough he was not in the best of humors when he sat down in the parlor at s.h.i.+rley.

The conversation, in some inscrutable way, turned upon Cousin Sarah Ann, and Robert so far forgot himself as to express pleasure in the thought that that lady was in no way akin to himself.

"But she is kin to you, Robert," said Aunt Catherine.

"How can that be, Aunt Catherine?" asked the young gentleman.

"Show him with the keys, Aunt Catherine, show him with the keys," said Billy, who had returned from court that day. "Come, Sudie, where's your basket? I want to see if Aunt Catherine can't muddle Bob's head as badly as she does mine sometimes. Here are the keys. Explain it to him, Aunt Catherine, and if he knows when you get through whether he is his great grandfather's nephew or his uncle's son once removed, I'll buy his skull for tissue paper at once. A skull that can let key-basket genealogy through it a'n't thick enough to grow hair on."

The task was one that the old lady loved, and so without paying the slightest attention to Billy's bantering she began at once to arrange the keys from Sudie's basket upon the floor in the shape of a complicated genealogical table. "Now my child," said she, pointing to the great key at top, "the smoke-house key is your great great grandmother, who was a Pembroke. The Pembrokes were always considered----"

"Always considered smoke-house keys--remember, Bob."

"Will you keep still, William? The Pembrokes were always considered an excellent family. Now your great great grandmother, Matilda Pembroke, married John Pemberton, and had two sons and one daughter, as you see.

The oldest son, Charles, had six daughters, and his third daughter married your grandfather Pagebrook, so she was your grandmother--the store-room key, you see----"

"See, Bob, what it is to be well connected," said Billy; "your own dear grandmother was a store-room key."

"Hush, Billy, you confuse Robert."

"Ah! do I? I only wanted him to remember who his grandmother was."

"Well," said the old lady, "Matilda Pemberton's daughter, your great grand aunt, married a man of no family--a carpenter or something--the corn-house key there."

"There it is, Bob. A'n't you glad you descended from a respectable smoke-house key, through an aristocratic store-room key, instead of having a plebeian corn-house key in the way? There's nothing like blue blood, I tell you, and ours is as blue as an indigo bag; a'n't it, Aunt Catherine?"

"Will you never learn, Billy, not to make fun of your ancestors? I have explained to you a hundred times how much there is in family. Now don't interrupt me again. Let me see, where was I? O yes! Your great grand aunt married a carpenter, and his daughter Sarah was your second cousin if you count removes, fourth cousin if you don't. Now Sarah was your Cousin Sarah Ann's grandmother, as you see; so Sarah Ann is your third cousin if you count removes, and your sixth cousin if you don't. Do you understand it now?"

"Of course he does," said Billy; "but I must break up the family now, as I see Polidore's waiting for the madam's great grandfather, to wit, the corn-house key. Come Bob, let's go up to the stable and see the horses fed."

CHAPTER XIV.

_Mr. Pagebrook Manages to be in at the Death._

Not many days after Robert's uncomfortable dinner at The Oaks, a servant came over with a message from Major Pagebrook, to the effect that a grand fox-chase was arranged for the next morning. Foggy and Dr.

Harrison had originated it, but Major Pagebrook's and several other gentlemen's hounds would run, and Ewing invited his cousins, Robert and Billy, to take part in the sport. Accordingly our two young gentlemen ate an early breakfast and rode over to that part of The Oaks plantation known as "Pine quarter," where the first fox-hunt of the season was always begun. They arrived not a moment too soon, and found the hounds just breaking away and the riders galloping after them. The first five miles of country was comparatively open, a fact which gave the fox a good start and promised to make the chase a long and a rapid one.

Robert Pagebrook had never seen a fox-chase, and his only knowledge of the sport was that which he had gleaned from descriptions, but he was on a perfect horse as inexperienced as himself; he was naturally very fearless; he was intensely excited, and it was his habit to do whatever he believed to be the proper thing on any occasion. From books he had got the impression that the proper thing to do in fox-hunting was to ride as hard as he could straight after the hounds, and this he did with very little regard for consequences. He galloped straight through clumps of pine, "as thick," Billy said, "as the hair on Absalom's head," while others rode around them. He plunged through creek "low grounds" without a thought of possible mires or quicksands. He knew that fox-hunters made their horses jump fences, but he knew nothing of their practice in the matter of knocking off top rails first, and accordingly he rode straight at every fence which happened to stand in his way, and forced his horse to take them all at a flying leap.

On and on he went, straight after the hounds, his pulse beating high and his brain whirling with excitement. The more judicious hunters of the party would have been left far behind but for the advantage they possessed in their knowledge of the country and their consequent ability to antic.i.p.ate the fox's turnings, and to save distance and avoid difficulties by following short cuts. Robert rode right after the hounds always.

"That cousin of yours is crazy," said one gentleman to Billy; "but what a magnificent rider he is."

"Why don't you stop your cousin?" asked another, "he'll kill himself, to a certainty, if you don't."