"I see. And you have always been in his service?"
"Whenever he kept house, sir. When Mrs. Wallifarro died and Mr. Morgan was at boarding school, the Colonel lived at the Club. I was assistant steward there during that time, sir."
"Ah, that accounts for a number of things," hazarded the guest with a smile. "For your ex cathedra knowledge of serving wines, for example."
"No, sir, I hardly think so." There was a respectful trace of negation and hauteur in the disclaimer. "I learned in the Colonel's house. That was why they wanted me at the Club."
"Of course; I beg your pardon."
When the coloured man had withdrawn, the smile lingered on the weathered face of the soldier, drawing pleasing little wrinkles about his eyes. Here indeed was that traditional and charming flavour of ingredients which the South has given to the diverse table of the nation.
Colonel Wallifarro was a gentleman in whom the definition of aristocracy found justification; the negro, a survivor of that form of slavery in which the master held his chattel, was a human soul in trust—they were Wallifarros white and black!
Then McCalloway's eyes fell on Boone as he greeted Anne, and a new thought flashed into his mind.
"Wallifarro—Wallver—Wellver," he exclaimed to himself under his breath. "Boone said his old grandfather spoke of his people being lords and ladies once!"
His mind, tempted into a speculative train of ideas, began weaving a pattern of genealogical surmise—a pattern involving not only the blood-lines of a single family, but also the warp and woof of national beginnings. In his imagination he completed the trinity. The Colonel and his servant were exponents of the Old South and its gracious oligarchy. Boone sprang from the hills that bred a race which some one had called "The Roundheads of the South." Yet at the start Boone's blood and that of the Colonel's had perhaps been one blood: the sap of a single and identical tap-root. Two brothers, setting out together in that hegira of empire seekers that turned their faces west, had perhaps been separated by the chances of the wilderness trail. One had won through, and his sons and daughters had dwelt in ease. One had fallen by the hard road, and the mould of decay had taken him root and branch. The name of the stranded one had lapsed into its phonetic equivalent—as had the negro's—and yet—