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Page 54
Philip laughed as he swung into the saddle and looked down at the
friendly faces, most of them black faces, below, "Good-by," he said.
"Wish me good luck, won't you?" and a willing chorus of "Good luck,
boss," came flying after him as the horse's hoofs clattered down the
street.
Through the bright drowsiness of the little city he rode in the early
Sunday morning, and his heart sang for joy to feel himself again across
a horse, and for the love of the place that warmed him already. The sun
shone hotly, but he liked it; he felt his whole being slipping into
place, fitting to its environment; surely, in spite of birth and
breeding, he was Southern born and bred, for this felt like home more
than any home he had known!
As he drew away from the city, every little while, through stately
woodlands, a dignified sturdy mansion peeped down its long vista of
trees at the passing cavalier, and, enchanted with its beautiful
setting, with its air of proud unconsciousness, he hoped each time that
Fairfield would look like that. If he might live here--and go to New
York, to be sure, two or three times a year to keep the edge of his
brain sharpened--but if he might live his life as these people lived, in
this unhurried atmosphere, in this perfect climate, with the best things
in his reach for every-day use; with horses and dogs, with out-of-doors
and a great, lovely country to breathe in; with--he smiled vaguely--with
sometime perhaps a wife who loved it as he did--he would ask from earth
no better life than that. He could write, he felt certain, better and
larger things in such surroundings.
But he pulled himself up sharply as he thought how idle a day-dream it
was. As a fact, he was a struggling young author, he had come South for
two weeks' vacation, and on the first morning he was planning to live
here--he must be light-headed. With a touch of his heel and a word and a
quick pull on the curb, his good horse broke into a canter, and then,
under the loosened rein, into a rousing gallop, and Philip went dashing
down the country road, past the soft, rolling landscape, and under cool
caves of foliage, vivid with emerald greens of May, thoughts and dreams
all dissolved in exhilaration of the glorious movement, the nearest
thing to flying that the wingless animal, man, may achieve.
He opened his coat as the blood rushed faster through him, and a paper
fluttered from his pocket. He caught it, and as he pulled the horse to a
trot, he saw that it was his cousin's letter. So, walking now along the
brown shadows and golden sunlight of the long white pike, he fell to
wondering about the family he was going to visit. He opened the folded
letter and read:
"My dear Cousin," it said--the kinship was the first thought in John
Fairfield's mind--"I received your welcome letter on the 14th. I am
delighted that you are coming at last to Kentucky, and I consider that
it is high time you paid Fairfield, which has been the cradle of your
stock for many generations, the compliment of looking at it. We closed
our house in Lexington three weeks ago, and are settled out here now for
the summer, and find it lovelier than ever. My family consists only of
myself and Shelby, my one child, who is now twenty-two years of age. We
are both ready to give you an old-time Kentucky welcome, and Westerly is
ready to receive you at any moment you wish to come."
The rest was merely arrangement for meeting the traveller, all of which
was done away with by his earlier arrival.
"A prim old party, with an exalted idea of the family," commented Philip
mentally. "Well-to-do, apparently, or he wouldn't be having a winter
house in the city. I wonder what the boy Shelby is like. At twenty-two
he should be doing something more profitable than spending an entire
summer out here, I should say."
The questions faded into the general content of his mind at the glimpse
of another stately old pillared homestead, white and deep down its
avenue of locusts. At length he stopped his horse to wait for a ragged
negro trudging cheerfully down the road.
"Do you know a place around here called Fairfield?" he asked.
"Yessah. I does that, sah. It's that ar' place right hyeh, sah, by yo'
hoss. That ar's Fahfiel'. Shall I open the gate fo' you, boss?" and
Philip turned to see a hingeless ruin of boards held together by the
persuasion of rusty wire.
"The home of my fathers looks down in the mouth," he reflected aloud.
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