Is it that there comes to the world an hour in the twenty and four in which it lays aside the mortality of the earth and clothes itself in an immortality of a very great awe? I think that it is so; and it was out into the whiteness of that hour that I stepped when I had successfully passed from my room to the garden of the home of my Uncle, the General Robert, which is also the home of my American ancestors. A command for my presence had come to me from the loved Gouverneur Faulkner and it was needful that I make all possible haste; but it seemed to me that all of the beautiful faded flowers of my dead grandmammas in that garden rose up around me for beguilement and gave to me a perfume that they had kept in saving for the Roberta, some day to come across the waters to them. And all of their little descendants, the opening blossoms of spring, also gave perfume to me in a mist in the white moonlight, while a few fragrant rose vines bent to detain me as I left that home of my grandmothers to go out into that sleeping city, alone. I had a great fear, but yet a great devotion drew me and in a very few minutes I had driven my Cherry from the garage and was on my way through the silent streets to—I did not know what.
At the door of the Mansion I was admitted by my good Cato, who was attired in a very long red flannel sleeping garment, with a red cap also of the flannel tied down upon the white wool of his head.
“Has you got dat hoodoo, little Mas’?” he demanded of me as I passed into the hall beneath the candle in a tall stand of silver which he held high over my head.
“Yes, good Cato,” I made answer to him and I was indeed glad that I had now of a habit put his gift under the heel of my left foot. It gave me great courage.
“De Governor is up in his room and you kin go right up. I never heard of no such doings as is going on in dis house dis night with that there wild man with a gun five feet long, coming and going like de wind. Go on up, honey, and see what you kin do to dem with dat hoodoo.” With which information good Cato started me up the stairs. “First door to the right, front, and don’t knock,” he called in a whisper that might have come from his tomb in death as he slowly retired into the darkness below with his candle.
For a very long minute I stood before that door in the dim light that came through one of the wide windows from the moon without.
“What is this madness that you perform, Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye?” I made demand of myself while my knees trembled in the trousers of heavy gray worsted.
“Robert Carruthers goes to his chief in an hour of need and he is descended of that Madam Donaldson who had no fear of the Indian or the bear when there was danger to her beloved,” I made answer to myself and softly I turned the handle of that door and entered the room of the Gouverneur Faulkner.
“Is that you, Robert?” came a question in his voice from a large table over by the window. The room was entirely in shadow, except for the shaded light upon the table, under whose rays I remarked the head and shoulders of that Gouverneur Faulkner, at whose bidding I had come out into the dead of the night. “Come over here and walk softly, so as not to stir up Jenkins,” he commanded me and I went immediately to his side, even if I did experience a difficulty in the breath of Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye.