The Maid-At-Arms | Page 6

wrinkled face to listen.
"Uncle," I said, "is it true that you are all mad in this house?"
"We sho' is, suh," he replied, without interest.
"Are you too crazy to care for my horse?"
"Oh no, suh."
"Then go and rub her down, and feed her, and let me sit here in the
hallway. I want to think."
Another crash shook the ceiling of solid oak; very far away I heard a
young girl's laughter, then a stifled chorus of voices from the floor
above.
"Das Miss Dorry an' de chilluns," observed the old man.
"Who are the others?"
"Waal, dey is Miss Celia, an' Mars' Harry, an' Mars' Ruyven, an' Mars'
Sam'l, an' de babby, li'l Mars' Benny."
"All mad?"
"Yaas, suh."
"I'll be, too, if I remain here," I said. "Is there an inn near by?"
"De Turkle-dove an' Olives."

"Where?"
"'Bout five mile long de pike, suh."
"Feed my horse," I said, sullenly, and sat down on a settle, rifle cradled
between my knees, and in my heart wrath immeasurable against my kin
the Varicks.

II
IN THE HALLWAY
So this was Northern hospitality! This a Northern gentleman's home,
with its cobwebbed ceiling, its little window-panes opaque with stain of
rain and dust, its carpetless floors innocent of wax, littered with odds
and ends--here a battered riding-cane; there a pair of tarnished spurs;
yonder a scarlet hunting-coat a-trail on the banisters, with skirts all mud
from feet that mayhap had used it as a mat in rainy weather!
I leaned forward and picked up the riding-crop; its cane end was
capped with heavy gold. The spurs I also lifted for inspection; they
were beautifully wrought in silver.
Faugh! Here was no poverty, but the shiftlessness of a sot, trampling
good things into the mire!
I looked into the fireplace. Ashes of dead embers choked it; the
andirons, smoke-smeared and crusted, stood out stark against the sooty
maw of the hearth.
Still, for all, the hall was made in good and even noble proportion;
simple, as should be the abode of a gentleman; over-massive, perhaps,
and even destitute of those gracious and symmetrical galleries which
we of the South think no shame to take pride in; for the banisters were
brutally heavy, and the rail above like a rampart, and for a newel-post
some ass had set a bronze cannon, breech upward; and it was green and
beautiful, but offensive to sane consistency.

Standing, the better to observe the hall on all sides, it came to me that
some one had stripped a fine English mansion of fine but ancient
furniture, to bring it across an ocean and through a forest for the
embellishment of this coarse house. For there were pictures in frames
showing generals and statesmen of the Ormond-Butlers, one even of
the great duke who fled to France; and there were pictures of the
Varicks before they mingled with us Irish--apple-cheeked Dutchmen,
cadaverous youths bearing match-locks, and one, an admiral, with star
and sash across his varnish-cracked corselet of blue steel, looking at me
with pale, smoky eyes.
Rusted suits of mail, and groups of weapons made into star shapes and
circles, points outward, were ranged between the heavy pictures, each
centred with a moth-ravaged stag's head, smothered in dust.
As I slowly paced the panelled wall, nose in air to observe these
neglected trophies, I came to another picture, hung all alone near the
wall where it passes under the staircase, and at first, for the darkness, I
could not see.
Imperceptibly the outlines of the shape grew in the gloom from a deep,
rich background, and I made out a figure of a youth all cased in armor
save for the helmet, which was borne in one smooth, blue-veined hand.
The face, too, began to assume form; rounded, delicate, crowned with a
mass of golden hair; and suddenly I perceived the eyes, and they
seemed to open sweetly, like violets in a dim wood.
"What Ormond is this?" I muttered, bewitched, yet sullen to see such
feminine roundness in any youth; and, with my sleeve of buckskin, I
rubbed the dust from the gilded plate set in the lower frame.
"The Maid-at-Arms," I read aloud.
Then there came to me, at first like the far ring of a voice scarcely
heard through southern winds, the faint echo of a legend told me ere
my mother died--perhaps told me by her in those drifting hours of a
childhood nigh forgotten. Yet I seemed to see white, sun-drenched

sands and the long, blue swell of a summer sea, and I heard winds in
the palms, and a song--truly it was my mother's; I knew it now--and, of
a sudden, the words came borne on a whisper of ancient melody:
"This for the deed she did at