“During the long open season in our country my grandfather constantly rode over the plantation in immaculate white duck, followed by a darky on a mule carrying a basket. On our ancestral estate there were many springs giving the purest and coldest of water, and these were providentially scattered at the most convenient intervals for my grandfather’s comfort. And as a slight return to nature for what she had done for him in this particular, my grandfather, in his early youth, had planted mint around all these springs. I need hardly point out the advantages of this happiest of combinations—a spring of clear, icy water; the pungent bouquet of lush mint; the ample basket borne by a faithful negro, and my grandfather, in his white duck suit and a Panama hat a yard wide, seated by the mossy spring, selecting with the most delicate care the worthiest of the fragrant leaves.
“Now”—and Governor Dangerfield smiled—“I can see that you are all busy guessing at the number of stops made by my grandfather in the course of a day, and I hasten to satisfy your curiosity. My grandfather always started out at six o’clock in the morning, and the springs were so arranged that he had to make six stops before noon, and four in the afternoon; but at five o’clock, when he reached home all fagged out by a hard day’s work and sorely needing refreshment, a pitcher of cherry bounce was waiting for him on the west gallery of the house. After that he took nothing but a night-cap on retiring for the night. To my friend, the governor of South Carolina, I need offer no apologies for my grandfather, once a senator in Congress, and a man distinguished for his sobriety and probity. He was an upright man and a gentleman, and died at ninety-two, full of years and honours, and complaining, almost with his last breath, of a distressing dusty feeling in the throat.”
When, as time passed, it seemed that every one had told a story or made a speech, it was Ardmore’s inspiration that Griswold should sing a song. The associate professor of admiralty in the University of Virginia had already pledged the loyalty of his state to her neighbours and twin sisters, the Carolinas, and Barbara, who wore a great bunch of her own white roses, had listened to him with a new respect and interest, for he spoke well, with the special grace of speech that men of his state have, and with little turns of humour that kept the table bubbling merrily.
“I shall comply with your request, my friends, if you can bear with the poor voice of one long out of tune, and if our host still has in the house a certain ancient guitar I remember from old times. But I must impose one condition, that I shall not again in this place be called by my academic title. I have known wars and the shock of battle along the Raccoon”—here his hand went to his lips in the gesture that had so often distressed Ardmore—“and I have known briefly the joy of a military title. Miss Osborne conferred on me in an emergency the noble title of major, and by it I demand hereafter to be known.”
The governor of South Carolina was promptly upon his feet.
“Henry Maine Griswold,” he said in his most official manner, “I hereby appoint you a major on my staff with all the rights, privileges, and embarrassments thereunto belonging, and you shall to-morrow attend me personally in my inspection of our troops in the field.”
As the guitar was placed in Griswold’s hands, Ardmore caused all the lights to be turned out save those on the table. In the soft candle-glow Ardmore bent his face upon Jerry, who had been merrily chaffing him at intervals, but who feigned at other times an utter ignorance of his presence on earth. As Griswold’s voice rose in the mellow dusk it seemed to Ardmore that the song spoke things he could not, like his friend, put into utterance, and something fine and sweet and hallowed—that sweet sabbath of the soul that comes with first love—possessed him, and he ceased looking at Jerry, but bent his head and was lost in dreams. For the song and the voice were both beyond what the company had expected. It was an old air that Griswold sang, and it gave charm to his words, which were those of a man who loves deeply and who dares speak them to the woman he loves. They rose and fell in happy cadences, and every word rang clear. In the longer lines of the song there was a quickening of time that carried the sense of passion, and Griswold lifted his head when he uttered them and let them cry out of him.
One of Barbara’s white roses had fallen into her lap, and she played with it idly; but after the first verse it slipped from her fingers, and she folded her arms on the table and bent her gaze on the quiet flame of the candle before her. And this was the song that Griswold sang:
Fair winds and golden suns
Down the year’s dim aisles of gray depart;