"And it follows logically that we two are kin. How does that strike you, Cousin Hugh Hildebrand," he added coolly.
"Better than being thrown out as a trespasser," I answered with the most convincing imitation of a smile that I could conjure up. "But I think I ought to be getting along; it's ten minutes to three."
"Remember that you are now south of Mason and Dixon's line," he rejoined, "and time is made only for slaves. But come along," and he led me, inwardly protesting, across the weedy expanse of what had once been a handsome piece of ornamental grass to where an old man sat in a big arm-chair under the shade of the most beautiful white oak that I had ever beheld in my life, an almost perfectly symmetrical ball of limbs and foliage. Then I looked at Fielding Thaneford and straightway forgot about the wonders of inanimate nature.
Certainly a very old man, and yet his skin was of a remarkable texture and quality, apparently as fine and softly pink as that of a baby. The resemblance to an infant was intensified by one distinguishing characteristic of the massive head and features—the total absence of any hirsute adornment; there was not a vestige of hair, beard, eyelashes, or eyebrows, and the effect was singularly repulsive. Yet he did not seem to be afflicted with the ordinary infirmities of senility, for he turned at the slight noise of our approaching footsteps and the eye that scanned me was of a cold, bright blue, indicative of a keen and finely coordinated intelligence.
"Father," said John Thaneford in his hatefully false voice of assumed cordiality, "this is our cousin, Hugh Hildebrand, of Philadelphia."
I fancied that the placid figure in the great chair stiffened slightly at the sound of my name. But otherwise he made no movement or sign, continuing to gaze upon me with those unflinching eyes, as horrible in their total lack of lashes as the optics of a vulture.
"He is here to be present at the funeral of Cousin Francis Graeme." Again that coldly devouring gaze passed over me; involuntarily I shivered and stepped back. What was the impression that was being made upon me? Not of malignancy certainly, nor even of ordinary cold-bloodedness; there was something too detached about this singular personality to suggest any kind of commonplace, healthy passion; if the crater had ever existed it had long since cooled to slag and ashes. There was but one fitting adjective—inhuman. Whatever spirit it was that still held its abode behind that fresh, childlike masque it endured altogether of its own volition and outside the sphere of those blessed, understandable things of our common life. In the world but not of it, if one may use that divine metaphor in its inverted sense. The babe possesses innocence in that it has never come into contact with sin and death, and a man may finally withdraw himself from the defilements of this naughty world and become again as a little child. Yet without repentance and so without grace. Lucifer himself could never assume the role of penitent, but he may easily take front rank as an ethical philosopher. And so Fielding Thaneford and I looked upon one another. Either might have put out a touching hand, and yet a thousand leagues could not have spanned the abyss that separated us. And in that selfsame moment the bell of S. Saviour's began to toll for the passing of him who had been master of "Hildebrand Hundred," and kin, through the blood tie, to one and all of us who waited and listened.
Fielding Thaneford had turned his eyes away, and they were fixed on the road winding far below the plateau on which stood "Thane Court"; in the distance appeared a stately moving cortège, the hearses and the carriages containing the mourners; there was a flutter of sable draperies and of funeral plumes; the old man looked, but remained immobile and impassive. With a nod of acknowledgment and farewell to John Thaneford I made my own way down the slope and into the shadow of the plantation of firs. There still remained the faint traces of a path, and presently it led me to the brick wall surrounding the churchyard, a wall built after the curious serpentine pattern generally ascribed to the inventive genius of Thomas Jefferson, and still to be seen at the University of Virginia. A door, painted a dull, faded green, had evidently been the private approach of the Thaneford family in days gone by, but now it was secured by a huge, rusty padlock, and I was obliged to skirt the wall and so reach the open lawn upon which the church faced.