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The Inn at the Red Oak

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THE INN AT THE RED OAK

BY LATTA GRISWOLD

1917




[Illustration: "It's a treasure right enough!" cried Dan.]




CONTENTS


PART I
THE OLD MARQUIS

I THE MARQUIS ARRIVES AT THE INN

II THE LION'S EYE

III THE MARQUIS AT NIGHT

IV THE OAK PARLOUR

V THE WALK THROUGH THE WOODS


PART II
THE TORN SCRAP OF PAPER

VI THE HALF OF AN OLD SCRAP OF PAPER

VII A DISAPPEARANCE

VIII GREEN LIGHTS

IX RECOLLECTIONS OF A FRENCH EXILE

X MIDNIGHT VIGILS


PART III
THE SCHOONER IN THE COVE

XI THE SOUTHERN CROSS

XII TOM TURNS THE TABLES

XIII MADAME DE LA FONTAINE

XIV IN THE FOG

XV NANCY

XVI MADAME AT THE INN

XVII THE MARQUIS LEAVES THE INN


PART IV
THE ATTACK ON THE INN

XVIII THE AVENUE OF MAPLES

XIX THE ATTACK

XX THE OAK PARLOUR

XXI THE TREASURE




The Inn at the Red Oak




PART I

THE OLD MARQUIS



CHAPTER I

THE MARQUIS ARRIVES AT THE INN


By the end of the second decade of the last century Monday Port had
passed the height of prosperity as one of the principal depots for the
West Indian trade. The shipping was rapidly being transferred to New York
and Boston, and the old families of the Port, having made their fortunes,
in rum and tobacco as often as not, were either moving away to follow the
trade or had acquiesced in the changed conditions and were settling down
to enjoy the fruit of their labours. The harbour now was frequently
deserted, except for an occasional coastwise trader; the streets began to
wear that melancholy aspect of a town whose good days are more a memory
than a present reality; and the old stage roads to Coventry and Perth
Anhault were no longer the arteries of travel they once had been.

To the east of Monday Port, across Deal Great Water, an estuary of the
sea that expanded almost to the dignity of a lake, lay a pleasant rolling
wooded country known in Caesarea as Deal. It boasted no village, scarcely
a hamlet. Dr. Jeremiah Watson, a famous pedagogue and a graduate of
Kingsbridge, had started his modest establishment for "the education of
the sons of gentlemen" on Deal Hill; there were half-a-dozen prospering
farms, Squire Pembroke's Red Farm and Judge Meath's curiously lonely but
beautiful House on the Dunes among them; a little Episcopalian chapel on
the shores of the Strathsey river, a group of houses at the cross roads
north of Level's Woods, and the Inn at the Red Oak,--and that was all.

In its day this inn had been a famous hostelry, much more popular with
travellers than the ill-kept provincial hotels in Monday Port; but now
for a long time it had scarcely provided a livelihood for old Mrs. Frost,
widow of the famous Peter who for so many years had been its popular
host. No one knew when the house had been built; though there was an old
corner stone on which local antiquarians professed to decipher the
figures "1693," and that year was assigned by tradition as the date of
its foundation.

It was a long crazy building, with a great sloping roof, a wide porch
running its entire length, and attached to its sides and rear in all
sorts of unexpected ways and places were numerous out houses and offices.
Behind its high brick chimneys rose the thick growth of Lovel's Woods,
crowning the ridge that ran between Beaver Pond and the Strathsey river
to the sea. The house faced southwards, and from the cobbled court before
it meadow and woodland sloped to the beaches and the long line of sand
dunes that straggled out and lost themselves in Strathsey Neck. To the
east lay marshes and the dunes and beyond them the Strathsey, two miles
wide where its waters met those of the Atlantic; west lay the great
curve, known as the Second Beach, the blue surface of Deal Bay, and a
line of rocky shore, three miles in length, terminated by Rough Point,
near which began the out-lying houses of Monday Port.

The old hostelry took its name from a giant oak which grew at its
doorstep just to one side of the maple-lined driveway that led down to
the Port Road, a hundred yards or so beyond. This enormous tree spread
its branches over the entire width and half the length of the roof.
Ordinarily, of course, its foliage was as green as the leaves on the
maples of the avenue or on the neighbouring elms, and the name of the Inn
might have seemed to the summer or winter traveller an odd misnomer; but
in autumn when the frost came early and the great mass of green flushed
to a deep crimson it could not have been known more appropriately than as
the Inn at the Red Oak.

It was a solidly-built house, such as even in the early part of the
nineteenth century men were complaining they could no longer obtain;
built to weather centuries of biting southeasters, and--the legend
ran--to afford protection in its early days against Indians. At the time
of the Revolution it had been barricaded, pierced with portholes, and had
served, like innumerable other houses from Virginia to Massachusetts, as
Washington's headquarters. When Tom Pembroke knew it best, its old age
and decay had well set in.

Pembroke was the son of the neighbouring squire, whose house, known as
the Red Farm, lay In the little valley on the other side of the Woods at
the head of Beaver Pond. From the time he had been able to thread his way
across the woodland by its devious paths--Tom had been at the Inn almost
every day to play with Dan Frost, the landlord's son. They had played in
the stables, then stocked with a score of horses, where now there were
only two or three; in the great haymows of the old barn in the clearing
back of the Inn; in the ramshackle garret under that amazing roof; or,
best of all, in the abandoned bowling-alley, where they rolled
dilapidated balls at rickety ten-pins.

When Tom and Dan were eighteen--they were born within a day of each
other one bitter February--old Peter died, leaving the Inn to his wife.
Mrs. Frost pretended to carry on the business, but the actual task of
doing so soon devolved upon her son. And in this he was subjected to
little interference; for the poor lady, kindly inefficient soul that she
was, became almost helpless with rheumatism. But indeed it was rather on
the farm than to the Inn that more and more they depended for their
living. In the social hierarchy of Caesarea the Pembrokes held
themselves as vastly superior to the Frosts; but thanks to the
easy-going democratic customs of the young republic, more was made of
this by the women than the men.

The two boys loved each other devotedly, though love is doubtless the
last word they would have chosen to express their relation. Dan was tall,
dark, muscular; he had a well-shaped head on his square shoulders; strong
well-cut features; a face that the sun had deeply tanned and dark hair
that it had burnished with gold. Altogether he was a prepossessing lad,
though he looked several years older than he was, and he was commonly
treated by his neighbours with a consideration that his years did not
merit. Tom Pembroke was fairer; more attractive, perhaps, on first
acquaintance; certainly more boyish in appearance and behaviour. He was
quicker in his movements and in his mental processes; more aristocratic
in his bearing. His blue eyes were more intelligent than Dan's, but no
less frank and kindly. Young Frost admired his friend almost as much as
he cared for him; for Dan, deprived of schooling, had a reverence for
learning, of which Tom had got a smattering at Dr. Watson's establishment
for "the sons of gentlemen" on the nearby hill.

One stormy night in early January, the eve of Dan Frost's twenty-second
birthday, the two young men had their supper together at the Inn, and
afterwards sat for half-an-hour in the hot, stove-heated parlour until
Mrs. Frost began to nod over her knitting.

"Off with you, boys," she said at length; "you will be wanting to smoke
your dreadful pipes. Nancy will keep me company."

They took instant advantage of this permission and went into the deserted
bar, where they made a roaring fire on the great hearth, drew their
chairs near, filled their long clay pipes with Virginia tobacco, and fell
to talking.

"Think of it!" exclaimed young Frost, as he took a great whiff at his
pipe; "here we are--the middle of the winter--and not a guest in the
house. Why we used to have a dozen travellers round the bar here, and the
whole house bustling. I've known my father to serve a hundred and more
with rum on a night like this. Now we do a fine business if we serve as
many in a winter. Times have changed since we were boys."

"Aye," Tom agreed, "and it isn't so long ago, either. It seemed to me as
if the whole county used to be here on a Saturday night."

"I'm thinking," resumed Dan musingly, "of throwing up the business,
what's the use of pretending to keep an inn? If it wasn't for mother
and for Nancy, I'd clear out, boy; go off and hunt my fortune. As it is,
with what I make on the farm and lose on the house, I just pull through
the year."

"By gad," exclaimed Tom, "I'd go with you, Dan. I'm tired to my soul with
reading law in father's office. Why, you and I haven't been farther than
Coventry to the county fair, or to Perth Anhault to make a horse trade.
I'd like to see the world, go to London and Paris. I've wanted to go to
France ever since that queer Frenchman was here--remember?--and told us
those jolly tales about the Revolution and the great Napoleon. We were
hardly more than seven or eight then, I guess."

"I would like to go, hanged if I wouldn't," said Dan. "I'm getting more
and more discontented. But there's not much use crying for the moon, and
France might as well be the moon, for all of me." He relapsed then into a
brooding silence. It was hard for an inn-keeper to be cheerful in
midwinter with an empty house. Tom too was silent, dreaming vividly, if
vaguely, of the France he longed to see.

"Hark!" exclaimed Dan presently. "How it blows! There must be a big sea
outside to-night."

He strode to the window, pushed back the curtains of faded chintz, and
stared out into the darkness. The wind was howling in the trees and about
the eaves of the old inn, the harsh roar of the surf mingled with the
noise of the storm, and the sleet lashed the window-panes in fury.

"You will not be thinking of going home tonight, Tom?"

"Not I," Pembroke answered, for he was as much at home in Dan's enormous
chamber as he was in his own little room under the roof at the Red Farm.

As he turned from the window, the door into the parlour opened, and a
young girl quietly slipped in and seated herself in the chimney-corner.

"Hello, Nance," Dan exclaimed, as she entered; "come close, child; you
need to be near the fire on a night like this."

"Mother is asleep," the girl answered briefly, and then, resting her
chin upon her hands, she fixed her great dark eyes upon the glowing
logs. She was Dan's foster-sister, eighteen years of age, though she
looked hardly more than sixteen; a shy, slender, girl, lovely with a
wild, unusual charm. To Tom she had always been a silent elfin
creature, delightful as their playmate when a child, but now though
still so familiar, she seemed in an odd way, to grow more remote.
Apparently she liked to sit with them on these winter evenings in the
deserted bar, when Mrs. Frost had gone to bed; and to listen to their
conversation, though she took little part in it.

As Dan resumed his seat, he looked at her with evident concern, for she
was shivering as she sat so quietly by the fireside.

"Are you cold, Nance?" he asked.

"A little," she replied. "I was afraid in the parlour with Mother asleep,
and the wind and the waves roaring so horribly."

"Afraid?" exclaimed Tom, with an incredulous laugh. "I never knew you to
be really afraid of anything in the world, Nancy."

She turned her dark eyes upon him for the moment, with a sharp
inquisitive glance which caused him to flush unaccountably. An answering
crimson showed in her cheeks, and she turned back to the fire. The colour
fled almost as quickly as it had come, and left her pale, despite the
glow of firelight.

"I was afraid--to-night," she said, after a moment's silence.

Suddenly there came the sound of a tremendous knocking on the door which
opened from the bar into the outer porch, and all three started in
momentary alarm.

Dan jumped to his feet. "Who's that?" he cried.

Again came the vigorous knocking. He ran across the room, let down the
great oaken beam, and opened the door to the night and storm.

"Come in, travellers." A gust of wind and sleet rushed through the
opening and stung their faces. With the gust there seemed to blow in the
figure of a little old man wrapped in a great black coat, bouncing into
their midst as if he were an India rubber ball thrown by a gigantic hand.
Behind him strode in Manners, the liveryman of Monday Port.

"Here's a guest for you, Mr. Frost. I confess I did my best to keep him
in town till morning, but nothing 'd do; he must get to the Inn at the
Red Oak to-night. We had a hellish time getting here too, begging the
lady's pardon; but here we are."

Good-naturedly he had taken hold of his fare and, as he spoke, was
helping the stranger unwrap himself from the enveloping cloak.

"He's welcome," said Dan. "Here, sir, let me help you." He put out his
hand to steady the curious old gentleman, who, at last, gasping for
breath and blinking the sleet out of his eyes, had been unrolled by
Manners from the dripping cloak.

He was a strange figure of a man, they thought, as Dan led him to the
fire to thaw himself out. He was scarcely more than five and a half feet
in height, with tiny hands and feet almost out of proportion even to his
diminutive size. He was an old man, they would have said, though his
movements were quick and agile as if he were set up on springs. His face,
small, sharp-featured and weazened, was seamed with a thousand wrinkles.
His wig was awry, its powder, washed out by the melting sleet, was
dripping on his face in pasty streaks; and from beneath it had fallen
wisps of thin grey hair, which plastered themselves against his temples
and forehead. This last feature was also out of proportion to the rest of
his physiognomy, for it was of extraordinary height, and of a polished
smoothness, in strange contrast to his wrinkled cheeks. Beneath shone two
flashing black eyes, with the fire of youth in them, for all he seemed so
old. The lower part of his face was less distinctive. He had a small,
Suddenly there came the sound of a tremendous knocking on the door which
opened from the bar into the outer porch, and all three started in
momentary alarm.

Dan jumped to his feet. "Who's that?" he cried.

Again came the vigorous knocking. He ran across the room, let down the
great oaken beam, and opened the door to the night and storm.

"Come in, travellers." A gust of wind and sleet rushed through the
opening and stung their faces. With the gust there seemed to blow in the
figure of a little old man wrapped in a great black coat, bouncing into
their midst as if he were an India rubber ball thrown by a gigantic hand.
Behind him strode in Manners, the liveryman of Monday Port.

"Here's a guest for you, Mr. Frost. I confess I did my best to keep him
in town till morning, but nothing'd do; he must get to the Inn at the Red
Oak to-night. We had a hellish time getting here too, begging the lady's
pardon; but here we are."

Good-naturedly he had taken hold of his fare and, as he spoke, was
helping the stranger unwrap himself from the enveloping cloak.

"He's welcome," said Dan. "Here, sir, let me sharply-pointed nose; a
weak mouth, half-hidden by drooping white moustaches; and a small sharp
chin, accentuated by a white beard nattily trimmed to a point. He was
dressed entirely in black; a flowing coat of French cut, black small
clothes, black stockings and boots that reached to the calves of his
little legs. These boots were ornamented with great silver buckles, and
about his neck and wrists showed bedraggled bits of yellowed lace."

He stood before the fire, speechless still; standing first on one foot
then on the other; rubbing his hands the while as he held them to the
grateful warmth.

Nancy had in the meanwhile drawn a glass of rum, and now advancing
held it toward him a little gingerly. He took it eagerly and drained
it at a gulp.

"_Merci, ma petite ange; merci, messieurs_" he exclaimed at last; and
then added in distinct, though somewhat strongly accented English, "I ask
your pardon. I forget you may not know my language. But now that this
good liquor has put new life in my poor old bones, I explain myself. I am
arrived, I infer, at the Inn at the Red Oak; and you, monsieur, though so
young, I take to be my host. I have your description, you perceive, from
the good postilion. You will do me the kindness to provide me with supper
and a bed?"

"Certainly, sir," said Dan. "It is late and we are unprepared, but we
will put you up somehow. You too, Manners, had best let me bunk you till
morning; you'll not be going back to the Port tonight? Nancy a fresh
bumper for Mr. Manners."

"Thankee, sir; I managed to get out with the gentleman yonder, and I
guess I'll manage to get back. But it's a rare night, masters. Just a
minute, sir, and I'll be getting his honour's bags.... Thank ye kindly,
Miss Nancy."

He drained the tumbler of raw spirit that Nancy held out. Then he opened
the door again and went out into the storm, returning almost at once with
the stranger's bags.

Dan turned to his sister. "Nancy dear, go stir up Susan and Deborah. We
must have a fire made in the south chamber and some hot supper got ready.
Tell Susan to rout out Jesse to help her. Say nothing to Mother; no need
to disturb her. And now, sir," he continued, turning again to the
stranger, "may I ask your name?"

The old gentleman ceased his springing seesaw for a moment, and fixed
his keen black eyes on the questioner.

"_Certainment, monsieur_--certainly, I should say," he replied in a high,
but not unpleasant, voice. "I am the Marquis de Boisdhyver, at your
service. I am to travel in the United States--oh! for a long time. I stay
here, if you are so good as to accommodate me, perhaps till you are weary
and wish me to go elsewhere. You have been greatly recommended to me by
my friend,--quiet, remote, secluded, an _auberge_--what you call it?--an
inn, well-suited to my habits, my tastes, my desire for rest. I am very
_fatigué_, monsieur."

"Yes," said Dan, with a grim smile, "we are remote and quiet and
secluded. You are welcome, sir, to what we have. Tom, see that Manners
has another drink before he goes, will you? and do the honours for our
guest, while Nance and I get things ready."

As he disappeared into the kitchen, following Nancy, the Marquis looking
after him with a comical expression of gratitude upon his face. Tom drew
another glass of rum, which Manners eagerly, if rashly, devoured. Then
the liveryman wrapped himself in his furs, bade them good-night, and
started out again into the storm for his drive back to Monday Port.

All this time the old gentleman stood warming his feet and hands at the
fire, watching his two companions with quickly-shifting eyes, or glancing
curiously over the great bar which the light of the fire and the few
candles but faintly illuminated.

Having barred the door, Tom turned back to the hearth. "It is a bad
night, sir."

"But yes," exclaimed the Marquis. "I think I perish. Oh! that dreary
tavern at your Monday Port. I think when I arrive there I prefer to
perish. But this, this is the old Inn at the Red Oak, is it not? And it
dates, yes,--from the year 1693? The old inn, eh, by the great tree?"

"Yes, certainly," Pembroke answered; "at least, that is the date that
some people claim is on the old cornerstone. You have been here before
then, sir?"

"I?" exclaimed Monsieur de Boisdhyver. "Oh, no! not I. I have heard from
my friend who was here some years ago."

"Oh, I see. And you have come far to-day?"

"From Coventry, monsieur--Monsieur--?"

"Pembroke," Tom replied, with a little start.

"Ah! yes, Monsieur Pembroke. A member of the household?"

"No--a friend."

"I make a mistake," quickly interposed the traveller, "Pardon. I am come
from Coventry, Monsieur Pembroke, in an everlasting an eternal stage, a
monster of a carriage, monsieur. It is only a few days since that I
arrive from France."

"Ah, France!" exclaimed Tom, recalling that only a little while before he
and Dan had been dreaming of that magic country. And here was a person
who actually lived in France, who had just come from there, who
extraordinarily chose to leave that delightful land for the Inn at the
Red Oak in mid-winter.

"France," he repeated; "all my life, sir, I have been longing to
go there."

"So?" said the Marquis, raising his white eyebrows with interest. "You
love _ma belle patrie_, eh? _Qui Sait_?--you will perhaps some day go
there. You have interests, friends in my country?"

"No, none," Tom answered. "I wish I had. You come from Paris, sir?"

"_Mais oui_."

For some time they chatted in such fashion, the Marquis answering Tom's
many questions with characteristic French politeness, but turning ever
and anon a pathetic glance toward the door through which Dan and Nancy
had disappeared. It was with undisguised satisfaction that he greeted
young Frost when he returned to announce that supper was ready.

"I famish!" the old gentleman exclaimed. "I have dined to-day on a
biscuit and a glass of water."

They found the kitchen table amply spread with food,--cold meats, hot
eggs and coffee, and a bottle of port. Monsieur de Boisdhyver ate
heartily and drank his wine with relish, gracefully toasting Nancy as he
did so. When his meal was finished, he begged with many excuses to be
shown to his bedroom; and indeed his fatigue was evident. Dan saw him to
the great south chamber, carrying a pair of lighted candles before. He
made sure that all had been done that sulky sleepy maids could be induced
to do, and then left him to make ready for the night.

Lights were extinguished in the parlour and the bar, the fires were
banked, and the two young men went up to Dan's own room. There on either
side of the warm hearth, had been drawn two great four-posted beds, and
it took the lads but a moment to tumble into them.

"It's queer," said Dan, as he pulled the comfort snugly about his
shoulders, calling to Tom across the way; "it's queer--the old chap
evidently means to stay awhile. What does a French marquis want in a
deserted hole like this, I'd like to know? But if he pays, why the longer
he stays the better."

"I hope he does," said Tom sleepily. "He has a reason, I fancy, for he
asked questions enough while you were out seeing to his supper. He seems
to know the place almost as well as if he had been here before, though he
said he hadn't. But, by gad, I wish you and I were snug in a little hotel
on the banks of the Seine to-night and not bothering our heads about a
doddering old marquis who hadn't sense enough to stay there."

"Wish we were," Dan replied. "Good-night," he called, realizing that his
friend was too sleepy to lie awake and discuss any longer their
unexpected guest.

"Good-night," murmured Tom, and promptly drifted away into dreams of the
wonderful land he had never seen. As for Dan he lay awake a long time,
wondering what could possibly have brought the old Marquis to the
deserted inn at such a time of the year and on such a night.



CHAPTER II

THE LIONS EYE


Toward daylight the storm blew itself out, the wind swung round to the
northwest, and the morning dawned clear and cold, with a sharp breeze
blowing and a bright sun shining upon a snow-clad, ice-crusted world and
a sparkling sapphire sea.

Dan had risen early and had set Jesse to clear a way across the court and
down the avenue to the road. The maids, astir by dawn, were no longer
sulky but bustled about at the preparation of an unusually good breakfast
in honour of the new guest.

Mrs. Frost, who habitually lay till nine or ten o'clock behind the
crimson curtains of her great bed, had caught wind of something out of
the ordinary, demanded Nancy's early assistance, and announced her
intention of breakfasting with the household.

She was fretful during the complicated process of her toilette and so
hurt the feelings of her foster-daughter, that when Dan came to take her
into the breakfast room, Nancy found an excuse for not accompanying them.

The Marquis was awaiting their appearance. He stood with his back-to the
fire, a spruce and carefully-dressed little figure, passing remarks upon
the weather with young Pembroke, who leaned his graceful length against
the mantelpiece.

The noble traveller was presented with due ceremony to Mrs. Frost, who
greeted him with old-world courtesy. She had had, indeed, considerably
more association with distinguished personages than had most of the dames
of the neighbouring farms who considered themselves her social superiors.
She welcomed Monsieur de Boisdhyver graciously, enquiring with interest
of his journey and with solicitude as to his rest during the night. She
received with satisfaction his rapturous compliments on the comforts that
had been provided him, on the beauty of the surrounding country upon
which he had looked from the windows of his chamber, and on her own
condescension in vouchsafing to breakfast with them. She was delighted
that he should find the Inn at the Red Oak so much to his taste that he
proposed to stay with them indefinitely.

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