Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home.

by Gabrielle E. Jackson.

CHAPTER I

SPRINGTIDE

"Peggy, Maggie, Mag, Margaret, Marguerite, Muggins. Hum! Half a dozen of them. Wonder if there are any more? Yes, there's Peggoty and Peg, to say nothing of Margaretta, Gretchen, Meta, Margarita, Keta, Madge. My goodness! Is there any end to my nicknames? I mistrust I'm a very commonplace mortal. I wonder if other girls' names can be twisted around into as many picture puzzles as mine can? What do YOU think about it Shashai!" [Footnote: Shashai. Hebrew for n.o.ble, p.r.o.nounced Shash'a-ai.]

and the girl reached up both arms to draw down into their embrace the silky head of a superb young colt which stood close beside her; a creature which would have made any horse-lover stop stock-still and exclaim at sight of him. He was a magnificent two-year-old Kentuckian, faultless as to his points, with a head to set an artist rhapsodizing and a-tingle to put it upon his canvas. His coat, mane and tail were black as midnight and glossy as satin. The great, l.u.s.trous eyes held a living fire, the delicate nostrils were a-quiver every moment, the faultlessly curved ears alert as a wild creature's. And he WAS half wild, for never had saddle rested upon his back, girth encircled him or bit fretted the sensitive mouth. A halter thus far in his career had been his only badge of bondage and the girl caressing him had been the one to put it upon him. It would have been a bad quarter of an hour for any other person attempting it. But she was his "familiar," though far from being his evil genius. On the contrary, she was his presiding spirit of good.

Just now, as the splendid head nestled confidingly in her circling arms, she was whispering softly into one velvety ear, oh, so velvety! as it rested against her ripe, red lips, so soft, so perfect in their molding.

The ear moved slightly back and forth, speaking its silent language. The nostrils emitted the faintest bubbling acknowledgment of the whispered words. The beautiful eyes were so expressive in their intelligent comprehension.

"Too many cooks spoil the broth, Shashai. Too many grooms can spoil a colt. Too many mistresses turn a household topsy-turvy. How about too many names, old boy? Can they spoil a girl? But maybe I'm spoiled already. How about it?" and a musical laugh floated out from between the pretty lips.

The colt raised his head, whinnied aloud as though in denial and stamped one deer-like, unshod fore-hoof as though to emphasize his protest; then he again slid his head back into the arms as if their slender roundness encompa.s.sed all his little world.

"You old dear!" exclaimed the girl softly, adding: "Eh, but it's a beautiful world! A wonderful world," and broke into the lilting refrain of "Wonderful world" and sang it through in a voice of singularly, haunting sweetness. But the words were not those of the popular song.

They had been written and set to its air by Peggy's tutor.

She seemed to forget everything else, though she continued to mechanically run light, sensitive fingers down the velvety muzzle so close to her face, and semi-consciously reach forth the other hand to caress the head of a superb wolfhound which, upon the first sweet notes, had risen from where she lay not far off to listen, thrusting an insinuating nose under her arm. She seemed to float away with her song, off, off across the sloping, greening fields to the broad, blue reaches of Bound Bay, all a-glitter in the morning sunlight.

She was seated in the crotch of a snake-fence running parallel with the road which ended in a curve toward the east and vanished in a thin-drawn perspective toward the west. There was no habitation, or sign of human being near. The soft March wind, with its thousand earthy odors and promises of a Maryland springtide, swept across the bay, stirring her dark hair, brushed up from her forehead in a natural, wavy pompadour, and secured by a barrette and a big bow of dark red ribbon, the long braid falling down her back tied by another bow of the same color. The forehead was broad and exceptionally intellectual. The eyebrows, matching the dark hair, perfectly penciled. The nose straight and clean- cut as a Greek statue's. The chin resolute as a boy's. The teeth white and faultless. And the eyes? Well, Peggy Stewart's eyes sometimes made people smile, sometimes almost weep, and invariably brought a puzzled frown to their foreheads. They were the oddest eyes ever seen. Peggy herself often laughed and said:

"My eyes seem to perplex people worse than the elephant perplexed the 'six blind men of Hindustan' who went to SEE him. No two people ever p.r.o.nounce them the same color, yet each individual is perfectly honest in his belief that they are black, or dark brown, or dark blue, or deep gray, or SEA green. Maybe Nature designed me for a chameleon but changed her mind when she had completed my eyes."

Peggy Stewart would hardly have been called a beautiful girl gauged by conventional standards. Her features were not regular enough for perfection, the mouth perhaps a trifle too large, but she was "mightily pleasin' fer to study 'bout," old Mammy insisted when the other servants were talking about her baby.

"Oh, yes," conceded Martha Harrison, the only white woman besides Peggy herself upon the plantation. "Oh, yes, she's pleasing enough, but if her mother had lived she'd never in this world a-been allowed to run wild as a boy, a-getting tanned as black as a--a, darky."

Martha was a most devoted soul who had come from the North with her mistress when that lady left her New England home to journey to Maryland as Commander Stewart's bride. He was only a junior lieutenant then, but that was nearly eighteen years before this story opens. She had not seen many colored people while living in the Ma.s.sachusetts town in which she had been born and her experience with them was limited to the very few who, after the Civil War, had drifted into it. Of the true Southern negro, especially those of the ante-bellum type, she had not the faintest conception. It had all been a revelation to her. The devotion of the house servants to their "white folks," to whom so many had remained faithful even after liberation, was a never-ending source of wonder to the good soul. Nor could she understand why those old family retainers stigmatized the younger generations as "shiftless, no-account, new-issue n.i.g.g.e.rs." That there could be marked social distinctions among these colored people never occurred to her.

That generations of them had been carefully trained by master and mistress during the days of slavery, and that the younger generations had had no training whatever, was quite beyond Martha's grasp. Colored people were COLORED PEOPLE, and that ended it.

But as the years pa.s.sed, Martha learned many things. She had her own neatly-appointed little dining-room in her own well-ordered little wing of the great, rambling colonial house which Peggy Stewart called home, a house which could have told a wonderful history of one hundred eighty or more years. We will tell it later on. We have left Peggy too long perched upon her snake-fence with Shashai and Tzaritza.

The lilting song continued to its end and the dog and horse stood as though hypnotized by the melody and the fingers' magnetic touch. Then the song ended as abruptly as it had begun and Peggy slid lightly from her perch to the ground, raised both arms, stretching hands and fingers and inclining her head in a pose which would have thrilled a teacher of "Esthetic Posing" in some fashionable, faddish school, though it was all unstudied upon the girl's part. Then she cried in a wonderfully modulated voice:

"Oh, the joy, joy, joy of just being ALIVE on such a day as this! Of being out in this wonderful world and free, free, free to go and come and do as we want to, Shashai, Tzaritza! To feel the wind, to breathe it in, to smell all the new growing things, to see that water out yonder and the blue overhead. What is it, Dr. Llewellyn says: 'To thank the Lord for a life so sweet.' WE all do, don't we? _I_ can put it into words, or sing it, but you two? Yes, you can make G.o.d understand just as well. Let's all thank Him together--you as He has taught you, and I as He has taught me. Now:"

It was a strange picture. The girl standing there in the beautiful early spring world, her only companions a thoroughbred, half-wild Kentucky colt and a Russian wolfhound, literally worth their weight in gold, absolutely faultless in their beauty, and each with their wonderfully intelligent eyes fixed upon her. At the word "Now," the colt raised his perfect head, drew in a deep breath and then exhaled it in a long, trumpet-like whinny. The dog voiced her wonderful bell-like bay; the note of joy sounded by her kind when victory is a.s.sured.

The girl raised her head, and parting her lips gave voice to a long- drawn note of ecstasy, ending in a little staccato trill and the same upflinging of the arms.

It was all a rhapsody of springtide, the semi-wild things' expression of intoxicating joy at being alive and their absolute mutual harmony. The animals felt it as the girl did, and surely G.o.d acknowledged the homage.

Such spontaneous, sincere thanks are rare.

"Let's go now."

The horse's slender flanks quivered; his withers twitched with the nervous energy awaiting an outlet; the dog stood alert for the first motion.

Resting one hand upon those sensitive withers the girl gave a quick spring, landing lightly as thistledown astride the colt's back, holding the halter strap in her firm, brown fingers. Her costume was admirably adapted to this equestrian if somewhat unusual feat for a young lady. It consisted of a dark blue divided riding skirt of heavy cloth, and a midshipman's jumper, open at the throat, a black regulation neckerchief knotted sailor-fashion on her well-rounded chest. Anything affording freer action could hardly have been designed for her s.e.x. And a bonny thing she looked as she sat there, the soft wind toying with the loose hairs which had escaped their bonds, and bringing the faintest rose tint into her cheeks. It was still too early in the spring for the clear, dark skin to have grown "black as a darky's." "On to the end of nowhere!" she cried. "We'll beat you to the goal, Tzaritza. Go!"

At the word the colt sprang forward with an action so true, so perfect that he and the girl seemed one. The dog gave a low bark like a laugh at the challenge and with incredibly long, graceful leaps circled around and around the pair, now running a little ahead, then executing a wide circle, and again darting forward with that derisive bark.

Shashai's speed was not to be scorned--his ancestors held an international fame for swiftness, endurance and jumping--but no horse can compete with a wolfhound.

On, on they sped, the happiest, maddest, merriest trio imaginable, down the road to the point where the perspective seemed to end it but where in reality it turned abruptly, leaving the one following its course the choice of taking a sudden dip down to the water's edge or wheeling to the right and leaping "brake, bracken and scaur." The girl did not tighten her single guiding strap, she merely bent forward to speak softly into one ear laid back to catch the words:

"Right--turn!"

Just beyond was a high fence dividing the lane where it crossed two estates. It was surmounted by a stile of four steps. There was no pause in the colt's or dog's speed. Tzaritza cleared it like a--wolfhound.

Shashai with his rider skimmed over like a bird, landing upon the soft turf beyond with scarcely a sound.

Oh, the beauty of it all! Then on again through a patch of woodland which looked as though a huge gossamer veil had been laid over it. If ever pastelle colors were displayed to perfection Nature here held her exhibition. Soft pinks, pale blues, silver grays, the tenderest greens with here and there a touch of the maple buds' rich mahogany reds, and above and about the maddest melody of bird songs from a hundred throats.

As the horse swung along in his perfect gait, the great dog making playful leaps and feinted snaps at his beautiful muzzle with a dog's derisive smile and sense of humor, and if any one doubts that dogs have this quality they simply don't know the animal, the girl sang at the top of her voice.

They covered the ground with incredible swiftness and presently the lane grew broader, giving evidence of more traffic where a wood road crossed it at right angles. Just a little beyond this point an old gentleman appeared in sight. He was walking with his hands clasped behind him and his head bent to examine every foot of the roadway. Evidently he was too absorbed to be aware of the trio bearing down upon him. He wore the clerical garb of the Church of England, and his face would have attracted attention in any part of the world, it was so pure, so refined, so like a cameo in its delicacy of outline, and the skin held the wonderful softness and clearness we sometimes see in old age. He must have been over seventy.

Just then he became aware of the colt's light hoofbeats and looked up.

He was tall and slight but very erect, and his face lighted up with a smile absolutely illuminating as he recognized his approaching friends.

The girl bent forward to say:

"One bell, Shashai." Whereupon her mount slackened his gait to the gentlest amble, but the dog went bounding on to greet the newcomer.

First she dropped down at his feet, burying her nose in her forepaws as though to make obeisance, but at his words:

"Ah, Tzaritza! Good Tzaritza, welcome!" she instantly sprang up, rested her forepaws upon his shoulders, and looked into his face with the most limpid pair of eyes ever seen; eyes filled with something deeper than human love can ever summon to human eyes, for those have human speech to supplement their appeal.

"Tzaritza. Dear, faithful Tzaritza," said the old man in the tenderest tone as he caressed the magnificent, silky head now nestling against his face as a child's might have nestled. "Good dog. Good dog. But here are Peggy and Shashai. My little girl, warm greetings," he cried as Shashai came to an instant statue-like standstill at Peggy's one word, "Halt!"

and she slid from his back, braced at "attention" and saluted in all gravity, the clergyman returning the salute with much dignity. Then in an instant the martial att.i.tude and air were discarded and springing forward the girl slipped to his side, caught one hand and by a quick, graceful motion circled his arm about her waist and laid her head upon his shoulder just where Tzaritza's had but a moment before rested, her face alight with affection as she exclaimed:

"To meet you 'way, 'way out here, Compadre!"

"'Far from the madding crowd,' Filiola. Five miles to the good for these old legs of seventy-four summers. They have served me well. I have no fault to find with them. They are stanch friends and have carried me many a mile. But you, my child? You and Tzaritza and Shashai? Come hither, my beauty," and the free hand was extended to the colt which instantly advanced for the proffered caress.

"Ah, thou bonny, bonny creature! Thou jewel among thy fellows. Ah, but you possess a masculine frailty. Ah, yes, I've detected it. Oh, Shashai, Shashai, is thy heart reached only through thy stomach?" for now the colt was nozzling most insinuatingly at one of the ample pockets of the old gentleman's top coat. Never had those pockets failed him since the days when he had ceased to be nourished by his dam's milk, and his faith in their bounty was not misplaced, for a slender white hand was inserted to be withdrawn with the lump of sugar Shashai had counted upon and held forth upon the palm from which the velvety lips took it as daintily as a young lady's fingers could have taken it.

Three was the dole evidently for when three had been eaten Shashai gravely bowed his head three times in acknowledgment of his treat and then turned to nibble at the budding trees, his benefactor returning to Peggy.

"So this is heyday and holiday, dear heart, is it? Sat.u.r.day's emanc.i.p.ation from your old Dominie Exactus when you may range wood and field unmolested, with never a thought for his domination and tyranny."

"As though you ever dominated or tyrannized over me!" protested the girl. "I'd do anything, ANYTHING for you--you know that, don't you?"

There was deep reproach in her voice. Then, it changed suddenly as she asked:

"But where is Doctor Claudius?"