The Frontiersmen. Mary Noailles MurfreeЧитать онлайн книгу.
Penelope Anne rushed to the rescue.
"And why should you not be an ambassador, sir?" she demanded.
"Why—why—because, girl, I am deafer than the devil's dam! I cannot fetch and carry messages of import. I could only give occasion for ridicule and scorn in even offering to assume such an office."
Peninnah Penelope Anne had flushed with the keen sensitiveness of her pride. She instantly appreciated the irking of the dilemma into which he had thrust himself forgetting his infirmity, and she could have smitten with hearty enmity and a heavy stick any lips which had dared to smile. She responded, however, with something of her mother's indirection.
"Under your favor, sir, you don't know how deaf the devil's dam may be—and it is not your wont to speak in that strain. I'm sure it reminds me of that man they call 'X,'—a sort of churl person—who talks of the devil and blue blazes and brimstone and hell as if—as if he were a native."
This was a turning of the sword of the pious "X" upon himself with a vengeance, for he was prone in his spiritual disquisitions to detail much of the discomfort of the future state that awaited his careless friends.
The allusion so far pleased old Mivane, who resented a suspected relegation of himself to a warm station in the schemes of "X," that, although his head was still bald and shining like a billiard ball, he suffered himself to drop into his chair, his stick resting motionless on the long-suffering puncheon floor.
"If I could only hear for a day I'd forgive twenty soundless years!" he declared piteously, for he so deprecated the enforced withdrawal from the enterprise that he had heedlessly undertaken, and felt so keenly the reflections upon his sentiments and sincerity surreptitiously canvassed between Ronackstone and "X," and then cavalierly rehearsed in his presence.
"You are only deaf to certain whanging voices in queer keys," his granddaughter declared.
"And how do I know in what sort of key the herders on the Keowee talk? They may 'moo' like the cow, or 'mew' like the cat! I should be in danger of losing half that was said. And that is what these varlets here in the station know right well. It must seem but a mere bit of bombast on my part. It could never be seriously countenanced—unless I had an interpreter. Stop me! but if you were a grandson instead of a granddaughter, I would not mind taking you with me to interpret for me, though, Gadzooks, I'd be like a heathen red Injun with a linguister!"
"And why am I not as good as any grandson?" demanded Peninnah Penelope Anne, with a spirited flash of her bright hazel eyes and great temerity of speculation; for be it remembered the days of the theories of woman's equality with man had not yet dawned. "Sure, sir, I can speak when I am spoken to. I understand the English language; and"—her voice rising into a liquid crescendo of delight—"I can wear my gray sergedusoy sack made over my carnation taffeta bodice and cashmere petticoat, all pranked out with bows of black velvet, most genteel, and my hat of quilled primrose sarcenet, grandfather. I'd take them in a bundle, for if we should have rain I would rather be in my old red hood and blue serge riding-coat on the way, grandfather."
And thus it was settled before she had fairly readjusted the peruke on his head as he sat in his great chair and she clambered on its arm.
She had not heard of the disaster that had befallen Ralph Emsden, and she turned rather pale and wistful when the news was communicated to her. Then realizing how opportune was the accident, how slight was its ultimate danger in comparison with the jeopardy of the mission from which he was rescued, she fairly gloated upon the chance which had conferred it upon her grandfather, and made her an instrument in its execution.
It was a queerly assorted embassy that rode out of the gates of the stockade, the ambassador and his linguister. Richard Mivane was mounted upon a strong, sprightly horse, with Peninnah Penelope Anne behind him upon a pillion. Following them at a little distance came his body-servant, Cæsar, more fitted by temperament than either to enjoy the change, the spirit of adventure, and reveling in a sense of importance which was scarcely diminished by the fact that it was vicarious. He rode a sturdy nag and had charge of a led horse, that bore a pack-saddle with a store of changes of raiment, of edible provisions, and tents to fend off the chances of inclement weather. They were to travel under the protection of a trader's pack-train, from a reëstablished trading-house in the Overhill Towns of the Cherokees on the Tennessee River; and so accurately did they time their departure and the stages of their journey that they met this caravan just at the hour and place designated, and risked naught from the unsettled state of the country or an encounter with some ignorant or inimical savage, prone to wreak upon inoffensive units vengeance for wrongs, real or fancied, wrought by a nation.
The trader, being a man habituated by frequent sojourns in Charlestown to metropolitan customs and a worldly trend of thought, instantly recognized the quality of Mivane and his granddaughter, despite the old red hood and blue serge riding-coat and their residence here so far from all the graces that appertain to civilization; though, to be sure, Richard Mivane, in his trim "Joseph," his head cowled in an appropriate "trotcozy," and his jaunty self-possession quite restored by the cutting of the Gordian knot of his dilemma, demonstrating his capacity to duly perform all his undertakings, bore himself in a manner calculated to enhance even the high estimation of his fellow-traveler. After the custom of a gentleman, however, he was most augustly free from unwarrantable self-assertion, but he could not have failed to be flattered by the phrase of the trader, could he have heard it, in delivering over his charge to the herders on the Keowee River. "Gadzooks, neighbors, but I shouldn't be a whit surprised if that old party is a duke in disguise!"
But the cow-drivers heard him not! They hardly heeded the coming and the going of the pack-train and their gossips the packmen! They cared naught for the news the caravan brought of the country-side far above, nor the commissions they were wont to give for the various settlements and the metropolis far below! For so featly came riding in to the humble prosaic precincts of the cow-pens and into their hearts the vernal beauty of Spring herself, the living Bloom of charm and love, all arrayed in delicate gray sergedusoy opening upon carnation taffeta, and crowned with sheer quillings of primrose sarcenet, with a cheek that repeated these roseate tints and a glint of golden brown tresses curling softly against a nape of pearl, that the ranchmen were bewitched and dazed, and knew no more of good common-sense. Their equilibrium thus shaken, some busied themselves in what might be called "housewifely cares," that the dainty visitant might be acceptably lodged and fed, and afterward they cursed their industry and hospitality that thus left her conversation and charming aspect to the shirks and drones, who languished about her, and affected to seek her comfort and minister to her entertainment. For the cow-drivers, like the other pioneer settlers of that region and day, represented various states of society and degrees of refinement, and to those to whom she was not as a blissful reminiscence of long ago, she appeared as a revelation, new and straight from heaven, a fancy, a dream! It seemed meet to them that she arrived in the illusory sunset of a sweet spring day, like some lovely forecast of the visions of the night.
With their artless bucolic ideals of entertainment they invited her out to show her the new calves. One of these little creatures, being exquisitely white and eminently pleasing to look upon, was straightway named, with her gracious permission, "Peninnah Penelope Anne," and she was assured that because of this name its owner, a slim, sentimental, red-haired youth, would never part from it. And it may be presumed that he was sincere, and that at the time of this fervent asseveration he had not realized the incongruity of living his life out in the constant heed of the well-being and companionship of a large white cow of the name of "Peninnah Penelope Anne." A more interesting denizen of the pen was a fawn, a waif found there one morning, having prudently adopted as a mother a large red cow, and a heavy brindled calf as a foster-brother. The instant Peninnah admired this incongruous estray, bleating its queer alien note in resonant duet with the calf in the plea for supper, a cord was slipped about its neck and it was presented in due form. In order that she might not be harassed by its tendance, a gigantic Scotch herder, six feet six inches high and twenty-five years of age, showed how far involuntary inanity can coexist with presumptive sanity as he led it about, the creature holding back heavily at every step and now and again tangling itself, its cord, and its disconcerted bleats about its conductor's long and stalwart legs. Another of the herders—all of whom were hunters