Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1910-05-20


ss-bound palaces on wheels and
dictatorial authority over uniformed
lackeys and other of his fellow crea-
lures, that fate dealt the Major it's
final stab and prepared to pour wine
and Oil into the wound-though Of the
Balm pouring, none could guess at tho
moment of wounding. 1t was not in
Caspar Dabney to be patient under
blow, and for a time his ragings
threatened to shake even Nanny Ju-
lets loyalty-than which nothing more
convincing can be said
"Mistuh Scipio," she would say, Use
JUS erbout wo'ed out! I done been
KNOWN Mawstuh CASPIAN ebber sence
/ was or Mistis' tiah-'ooman, and
amt new seen him so fractions ez he
been sence dat letter come tellin' him
come get dat po' III l-chtld O. Nav
| stub Louis's. Seems lax he JUS gwine
r'ar round twel he hurt somebody"
etoainshrdlu etoian shrdlu etoain ct
Scipio, the Majors body servant
had grown gray in the Dabney service,
and he was we'll used to the masters
storm periods.
"Doan' you trouble yose'f none err
bout dat, Mis- Juliet. Mawstuh Majuh
| tekkin' hit mighty hawd cause Nav
! stub Louis done daid. But bimeby you
gwine see him climm on his hawss an
ride up yondeh to whah de big steam
| boats comes in an'fotch dat iii gal
child home; an den: uck-uh- h! look
out niggahs; dar amt gwine be muffin
on de top side dtshyer yearth good er-
nough for iii Missy. You watch what
1 done toll yer erbout dat, now!"
| Scipio's prophecy. or as much of II
| as related to the bringing of the or
| phaned Ardea to Deer Trace Manor,
wrought itself out speedily, as mat
ter of course. At the close Of the war,
| Captain Louis, the Majors only son,
! had become, like many another hot
| hearted young Confederate, a self-ex-
| patrioted exile. On the eve of his de-
parture for France he had married the
Virginia maiden who had nursed him
| alive after Charlottesville. Major
Caspar had given the bride away-the
war had spared no kinsman Of hers to
stand in this breach-and when the
| God-speeds were said, had h1mselt
| turned back to the weed grown fields
| of Deer Trace Manor, embittered ana
hostile, swearing never to set foot out
side Of his home acres again while the
Union should stand.
For more than twenty years he kept
this VOW almost literally. A few of the
| older negroes, a mere handful or the
six score slaves of the old patriarchal
days, cast in their lot with their tor
me-. master, and with these the Major
made shift thriftily, farming little,
| stock raising a little, and, unlike most
! Of the war broken plantation owners,
| clinging tenaciously to every rood of
| hEyt he
title deeds.
In this cenobitic interval, If you
wanted a Dabney colt or Dabney
COW, you went, or sent, to Deer Trace
Manor on your own initiative, and you,
or your deputy, never met the Major:
YOUR business was transacted with
lean. lantern jawed Japheth Pettigrass,
| the Majors stock -and-farm foreman.
| And although the Dabney stock was
pedigreed, you kept your wits about
YOU: else Pettigrass got much the bet
! ter of YOU in the trade, like the shreWd,
| calculating Alabama Yankee that he
| was.
Ardea was born in Paris In the
twelfth year of the exile; and the Vir-
| ginia mother pining always for the
home land. died in the fifteenth year.
| Afterward Captain Louis fought
| long-drawn, losing battle figuring
bravely in his infrequent letters to his
| father as a rising miniature painter.
He had his little girl back and forth
between his lodgings and the studio
where he painted pictures that nobody
| would buy, and elling out a miserable
| existence by giving lessons in English
when he was happy enough to find
pupil.
The brave letters imposed on the Ma
! ior, as they were meant to do; and
Ardea, the loyal, happening on one OF
them in her first Deer Trace summer
read it through with childish sobs AMI
never thereafter opened her lips on the
story of those distressful Paris DAYS
later she understood her fathers mo-
five better: how he would not be
charge on an old man rich in nothing
Int ruin; and the memory of the
pinched childhood became a thing sa-
cred.
How the Major a second Rip Van
Wrinkle, found his way to New York,
and to the pier of the incoming French
Line steamer, must always remain a
mystery But he was there, with the
fierce old eyes quenched and swim
ming and the passionate Dabney lips
trembling strangely under the great
moustaches, when the black-frocked
little waif from the Old World ran
down the landing stage and into his
arms. Small wonder that they chung
TO each other, these two at the further
extremes of three generations; or that
the child opened a door in the heart
of the fierce old partisan which was
locked and doubly barred against all
others.
IT was all new and very strange to
child whose only outlook on life had
been urban and banal. She had never
seen a mountain, and nothing more
nearly approaching forest than the
marked groves of the Bots de Boulogne.
would it be permitted that she should
sometimes walk in the woods of the
FIRST .Dabney, she asked, with the quaint
French twisting of the phrases that
she was never able fully to overcome.
IT would certainly be permitted; more,