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Page 32
'Will then see to it--" said John.
"That comfortable quarters are found for you," said Blandford.
With creditable ingenuity, old Jake set up a cackling, high-pitched,
protracted laugh. He beat his knee, picked up his hat and bent the
brim in an apparent paroxysm of humorous appreciation. The seizure
afforded him a mask behind which he could roll his eyes impartially
between, above, and beyond his two tormentors.
"I sees what!" he chuckled, after a while. "You gen'lemen is tryin'
to have fun with the po' old nigger. But you can't fool old Jake. I
knowed you, Marse Blandford, the minute I sot eyes on you. You was a
po' skimpy little boy no mo' than about fo'teen when you lef' home to
come No'th; but I knowed you the minute I sot eyes on you. You is the
mawtal image of old marster. The other gen'leman resembles you
mightily, suh; but you can't fool old Jake on a member of the old
Vi'ginia family. No suh."
At exactly the same time both Carterets smiled and extended a hand for
the watch.
Uncle Jake's wrinkled, black face lost the expression of amusement to
which he had vainly twisted it. He knew that he was being teased, and
that it made little real difference, as far as its safety went, into
which of those outstretched hands he placed the family treasure. But
it seemed to him that not only his own pride and loyalty but much of
the Virginia Carterets' was at stake. He had heard down South during
the war about that other branch of the family that lived in the North
and fought on "the yuther side," and it had always grieved him. He
had followed his "old marster's" fortunes from stately luxury through
war to almost poverty. And now, with the last relic and reminder of
him, blessed by "old missus," and intrusted implicitly to his care, he
had come ten thousand miles (as it seemed) to deliver it into the
hands of the one who was to wear it and wind it and cherish it and
listen to it tick off the unsullied hours that marked the lives of the
Carterets--of Virginia.
His experience and conception of the Yankees had been an impression of
tyrants--"low-down, common trash"--in blue, laying waste with fire and
sword. He had seen the smoke of many burning homesteads almost as
grand as Carteret Hall ascending to the drowsy Southern skies. And
now he was face to face with one of them--and he could not distinguish
him from his "young marster" whom he had come to find and bestow upon
him the emblem of his kingship--even as the arm "clothed in white
samite, mystic, wonderful" laid Excalibur in the right hand of Arthur.
He saw before him two young men, easy, kind, courteous, welcoming,
either of whom might have been the one he sought. Troubled,
bewildered, sorely grieved at his weakness of judgment, old Jake
abandoned his loyal subterfuges. His right hand sweated against the
buckskin cover of the watch. He was deeply humiliated and chastened.
Seriously, now, his prominent, yellow-white eyes closely scanned the
two young men. At the end of his scrutiny he was conscious of but one
difference between them. One wore a narrow black tie with a white
pearl stickpin. The other's "four-in-hand " was a narrow blue one
pinned with a black pearl.
And then, to old Jake's relief, there came a sudden distraction.
Drama knocked at the door with imperious knuckles, and forced Comedy
to the wings, and Drama peeped with a smiling but set face over the
footlights.
Percival, the hater of mill supplies, brought in a card, which he
handed, with the manner of one bearing a cartel, to Blue-Tie.
"'Olivia De Ormond,'" read Blue-Tie from the card. He looked
inquiringly at his cousin.
"Why not have her in," said Black-Tie, "and bring matters to a
conclusion?"
"Uncle Jake," said one of the young men, "would you mind taking that
chair over there in the corner for a while? A lady is coming in--on
some business. We'll take up your case afterward."
The lady whom Percival ushered in was young and petulantly, decidedly,
freshly, consciously, and intentionally pretty. She was dressed with
such expensive plainness that she made you consider lace and ruffles
as mere tatters and rags. But one great ostrich plume that she wore
would have marked her anywhere in the army of beauty as the wearer of
the merry helmet of Navarre.
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