“An’ don’t forget, boy,” she told him gravely, “that if you don’t win I’ll be feelin’ all the more sympathy for you. It’ll be much better for you if you lose; for then I’ll spend all my time thinkin’ of you.”
“If I don’t win,” he began savagely, “I’ll—I’ll——”
“You’ll do nothin’ of the kind,” she calmed him firmly. “You’ll just try again, like everybody else. There isn’t a skipper on the Lake but what has lost a race some time or other.”
After a long chat together—Walter could always talk to Phœbe Norris—Phœbe told him it was time to go home. He did not want to go. The lunch was fine, but there were too many at lunch. Why not have a little cosy supper together—just the two of them—on the porch, watching the sunset?
“You’re goin’ home, boy;” she was jocular but determined. “The breath of scandal has never yet tarnished me fair escutcheon. I don’t know what an escutcheon is, my boy, or whether it’s right and proper for a female to have one; but I know I’m not goin’ to be entertainin’ handsome young bachelors—meanin’ you—all alone by meself at seducin’ suppers. Go ’long with you.”
And although she drove him off and he was very much disappointed, yet he walked up the hill delighted with himself. Phœbe always had that effect on him, and she was quite aware of it. She watched him like a mother as he stalked on, and waved a hand when he turned half-way up the hill and looked back.
“Well, he seems chipper enough now,” she puzzled over him, “but he was rather wild at first.... I wonder what got into the lad.”
Richard had not gone directly up to “Red Jacket.” The vineyards took his eye. The rows and rows of dwarfed grape plants and their thick clusters of perfect grapes—now hard and green, of course—reminded him of similar vineyards in France and along the banks of the Rhine. A negro workman here and there was quite willing to stop and talk. There were two interests here for Richard—one was the methods used for keeping these vines free from the thousand and one enemies of the fruit, and the other was the curious bit of history represented by these descendants of a Virginia slave plantation transferred to the North and still working for the old family.
So it was growing upon dusk before he left the vineyard and strolled up to the Big House. “Tshoti,” “Non,” “Da” and “Waga”—the four huge porch columns—loomed tremendously in the half light. He caught a portion of their mystery and remembered Jerry’s prediction that one night he should come upon them unexpectedly as they performed their sentinel guard, and that he would feel himself grow small in their presence.
Jawn was entertaining the Wells family when Richard arrived.