CAPE JESSAMINE
The two came from beneath the dripping trees out upon the cleared bank
of the Mississippi, and into a glare of pine torches. The rain had
lessened, the fitful wind beat the flames sideways, but failed to
conquer them. There was, too, a tar barrel burning. The light was
strong and red enough, a pulsing heart of light shading at its edges
into smoky bronze and copper, then, a little further, lost in the wild
night. The river curved like a scimitar, and the glare showed the
turbulent edge of it and the swirling cross-current that was setting a
tooth into the Cape Jessamine levee.
’Rasmus spoke. “Dis was always de danger place. Many er time I’ve seen
de Cun’l ride down heah, en’ stand er-lookin’!”
There seemed as many as a hundred negroes. They swarmed about the
imperilled point; they went to it in two converging lines. Each man
was bent under a load of something. He swung it from his shoulder,
straightened himself, and hurried, right or left, back to shadowy
heaps from which he lifted another load. “Dey sho’ gwine need de sand
bags dishyer night!” said ’Rasmus.
In the leaping and hovering light the negroes looked gigantic. Coal
black, bending, lifting, rushing forward, set about with night and the
snarl of the tiger, they had the seeming of genii from an Eastern
tale. Their voices came chantingly, or, after a silence, in a sudden
shout. Their shadows moved with them on the ground. Edward glanced
around for the directing white man. “Dar ain’t none,” said ’Rasmus.
“De haid oberseer when he heah dat New Orleans been taken he up en’
say dey need mo’ soldiers than dey do oberseers, en’ he went ter Baton
Rouge! En’ de second oberseer dat come up en’ tek he place, en’ is er
good man, las’ week he broke he hip. En’ dar wuz two-three others
er-driftin’ erroun, doin’ what dey wuz tol’ ter do, en’ dey gone too.
When hit wants ter, de river kin pull ’em in en’ drown ’em en’ tek ’em
erway, but dishyer war’s de wust yet! Yaas, sah, dishyer war’s er
master han’ at eatin’ men! No, sah, dar ain’t no white man, but dar’s
a white woman—”
Then Edward looked and saw Désirée Gaillard. She was standing high,
beneath her heaped logs, behind her the night. She had clasped around
her throat a soldier’s cloak. The wind raised it, blew it outward, the
crimson lining gleaming in the torchlight. All the red light beat upon
her, upon the blowing hair, upon the deep eyes and parted lips, the
outstretched arm and pointing hand, the dress of some bronze and
clinging stuff, the bent knee, the foot resting upon a log end higher
than its fellows. The out-flung and lifted cloak had the seeming of
the floating drapery in some great canvas, billowing mantle of
heroine, saint, or genius.
“Saintly,” however, was certainly not the word, and Désirée would not
have called herself heroine or genius. She was simply fearless and
intent, and since, to keep the negroes in courage and energy, it was
needful to keep them in good spirits, she was, also, to-night,
cheerful, humorous, abounding in praise. Her voice rang out, deep and
sweet. “Good man, Mingo! Mingo’s carrying two to everybody else’s one!
Lawrence is doing well, though! So is Hannah’s Tom!—
‘Levee! levee! lock your hands hard!
Levee, levee! keep the river from my home!—’
_Par ici, François!_ Christopher, Harper, Sambo, Haiti, Mingo Second,
make a line! Big Corinth, throw them the sacks! Work hard—work hard!
You shall have rest to-morrow, and at night a feast! Look at Mingo,
how he works! He isn’t going to let the river cover Cape Jessamine!
When the Colonel comes home he is going to say, ‘Good boy, Mingo!’
To-morrow night all the banjos playing, and good things to eat, and
the house-servants down at the quarters, and a dance like
Christmas!—Mingo, Mingo, put ten sacks just there—”
When she saw the soldier beside her her eyes opened wide in a moment’s
query, after which she accepted him as an item of the storm and the
night. All the land was in storm, and the stream of events rapid. From
every quarter and from distant forests the wind blew the leaves.
Sometimes one knew the tree from which they came, sometimes not. On
presumption, though, if the leaf were grey, the tree was a proper
tree, humble, perhaps, in its region and clime, but sound at heart and
of a right grain. When Private Edward Cary, gaunt, ragged, muddy,
unshaven, asked what he could do, she considered him gravely, then
gave him Mingo Second and thirty men, with whom he set to
strengthening a place of danger not so imminent. From where he worked
he heard at intervals her clear voice, now _insouciante_, now
thrilling. There came a moment of leisure. He turned and saw her where
she stood, her knee bent, her hand and arm outstretched against the
river, the horseman’s cloak blown backward and upward into a canopy,
the red light over all, strong and clear upon her face and throat and
bronze-sheathed body—saw her and loved her.
The December night, already well advanced, grew old. Always the river
attacked, always the land opposed. The yellow current sucked and
dragged, but the dyke held and the dyke grew stronger. The rain
ceased; far up in the sky, through a small, small rift peered a star.
The wind died into a whisper. By three o’clock there came a feeling
that the crisis had passed. ’Rasmus, working well with Edward’s
detachment, gave it voice. “Cape Jessamine’s done stood heah sence de
flood, en’ I specs dat’s two hundred yeahs! Yaas, Lawd! En’ when
Gabriel blow he trump, Cape Jessamine gwine up en’ say, ‘Heah I is,
sah!’”
And at that moment there came running through the fields a wild-eyed
negro, panic in his outstretched hands. “De levee by de backwoods—de
levee by de backwoods—de levee what nobody eber thinks ob, hit’s so
safe! De ribber done swing ergin hit—de ribber done gouge er hole big
ez de debbil! De yerth’s er-tumblin’ in, en’ de ribber’s comin’ out—”
Through the last half-hour of the night, up a broad avenue between
water oaks, Edward found himself hurrying with Désirée. Before them
raced the negroes, some upon the road, others streaming through the
bordering fields. Désirée ran like a huntress of Diana’s. Her
soldier’s cloak, blown by the wind, impeded her flight. She unclasped
it as she ran, and Edward took it from her.
“Will the house go?” he asked. “How great is the danger?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think we are in danger of our lives. I
don’t think the water can get to the house. It is not as though the
levee had broken where we were working. What would happen then doesn’t
stand contemplating. This other is but an arm of the river—not deep
nor strong. I think that the house quarters are safe and the stables.
But we must get the women and children and the old men from the lower
quarter. And the cattle in the fields—” She ran faster.
In the pallor of the dawn the house of Cape Jessamine rose before
them. Winged, with columns and verandahs, it loomed in the grey light
above leisurely climbing wide lawns and bosky garden. At the house
gates,—iron scroll and tracery between brick pillars, antique,
graceful,—they were met by the younger, less responsible of the house
servants.
“O my Lawd! O Lawd Jesus! O my Lawd, Missy! de ribber’s out! O my
Lawd, my sins! What we gwine ter do?”
“We’re going to stand a siege,” said Désirée. “Have they brought Mr.
Marcus in?”
“No’m. Dey waitin’ fer you ter tell dem—”
She pushed the cluster aside and ran on up the broad path, Edward
following. They mounted the steps, passed between the pillars,
entered, and sped through a wide panelled hall and came out upon
another verandah commanding a grassy space between house and offices.
At a little distance, upon the same level, straggling away beneath
pecan and pine and moss-draped oak, could be seen the house quarter.
The negroes came crowding, men and women, big and little. “De ribber,
Missy! De ribber, Missy! I don’ climb er tree en’ see hit! I see hit
er-comin’ en’ er-eatin’ up de cotton en’ de cane! O my Lawd, hit er
comin’ lak er thief in de night-time! O my Lawd, hit er comin’ lak er
ha’nt!”
Désirée stood on the verandah steps and issued her orders. “Mingo, you
take four men and go to the overseer’s house. Tell Mr. Marcus that I
say he’s not to trust to the water not coming high in his house. Tell
him I _order_ him to come to the big house. Take him up on his
mattress and bring him. Hurry, now, hurry! Mingo Second, Lawrence,
Adolph, Creed, Lot,—six more of you! Try what you can do for the
cattle in the lower fields! Try hard! If you bring them in, you shall
have everything double to-night!—Haiti, Sambo, Hannah’s Tom, all of
you men on this side,—yes, you too, soldier, if you will!—we’ll go now
and bring the women and children and old men from the lower quarter!”
They were brought in—brought the last part of the distance through the
knee-deep flood. When they got to the rising ground and the house
quarter the water was close behind them. Yellow now in the
strengthening light, beneath a tempestuous morning sky, it washed and
sucked and drew against the just-out-of-reach demesne.
When the crippled overseer had been laid in a wing of the house, and
the lower-quarter people had been disposed of in the house quarter and
the innumerable out-buildings, when the cattle Mingo Second brought in
had been stalled and penned, when with great iron keys Désirée had
opened smokehouse and storehouse and given out rations, when fires had
been kindled on cabin hearths, and old Daddy Martin had taken his
banjo, and the house servants had regained equanimity and importance,
and “Missy” had lavishly praised everybody, even the piccaninnies who
hadn’t cried—the plantation, so suddenly curtailed, settled under a
stormy yellow sunrise into a not unpleasurable excitement and holiday
feeling—much like that of an important funeral.
Désirée stood at last alone but for Edward, and for two or three house
servants, hovering in the doorway. She had again about her the
scarlet-lined cloak; her throat, face, and head were drawn superbly
against the lighted east.
She pushed back her wind-blown hair and laughed. “It might have been
worse!—which is my habitual philosophy! We will have fair weather now,
and the water will go down.”
“I am strange to this country,” said Edward. “How can I find the road
to Vidalia?”
He stood illumined by the morning glow, his rifle beside him where he
had leaned it against the pillar. Now and again, through the past
hours, his voice had been in her ear. In the first hearing it, in the
moil and anxiety, she had at once the knowledge that this chance
soldier possessed breeding. In this time and region the “private”
before the “soldier” had the slightest of qualificatory value.
University and professional men, wealthy planters, sons of commanding
generals—all sorts and conditions were private soldiers. This one was,
it appeared from his voice, of her own condition. But though she had
noted his voice, by torchlight or by daybreak she had scarce looked at
him. Now she did so; each looked into the other’s eyes.
“Vidalia? The road to Vidalia is covered. You must wait until the
water goes down.”
“How long will that be?”
“Three days, perhaps.... You gave me good help. Permit me now to
regard you as my guest.”
“You are all goodness. If you will give yourself no concern—I am
Edward Cary, private in the ——th Virginia Infantry, lately transferred
South. An accident, yesterday evening, left me behind my company on
the road to Vidalia. I must follow as soon as it is at all possible.”
“It is not so yet. My father is with General Beauregard. My brother is
at Grenada with General Van Dorn. I am Désirée Gaillard. We
Louisianians know what soldiers are the Virginia troops. Cape
Jessamine gives you welcome and says, ‘Be at home for these three
days.’”
She turned and spoke. The old butler came forward. “Etienne, this
gentleman is our guest. Show him to the panelled room, and tell Simon
he is to wait upon him.” She spoke again to Edward. “Breakfast will be
sent to you there. And then you must sleep.—No, there is nothing we
can do. The danger to the main levee has passed for this time, I am
sure.—Yes, there is still food. We can only fold our hands and wait. I
am used to that if you are not. Refresh yourself and sleep. Supper is
at seven, and I hope that you will take it with me.”
The panelled room, with a lightwood fire crackling upon the hearth,
with jalousied windows just brushed against from without by a superb
magnolia, with a cricket chirping, with a great soft white bed—ah, the
panelled room was a place in which to sleep! The weary soldier from
Virginia slept like the dead. The day passed, the afternoon was
drawing toward evening, before he began to dream. First he dreamed of
battle; of A.P. Hill in his red battle-shirt, and of an order from
“Old Jack” which nobody could read, but which everybody knew must be
immediately obeyed. In the midst of the whole division trying to
decipher it, it suddenly became perfectly plain, and the Light
Division marched to carry it out,—only he himself was suddenly back
home at Greenwood and Mammy was singing to him
“The buzzards and the butterflies.”
He turned upon his side and drifted to the University, and then turned
again and dreamed of a poem which it seemed he was writing,—a great
poem,—a string of sonnets, like Petrarch or Surrey or Philip Sidney.
The sonnets were all about Love.... He woke fully and his mind filled
at once with the red torchlight, the wild river beyond the levee, and
the face and form of Désirée Gaillard.
The door gently opened and Simon entered the panelled room, behind him
two boys bearing great pitchers of heated water. The lightwood fire
was burning brightly; through the jalousies stole the slant rays of
the sinking sun; the magnolia, pushed by the evening wind, tapped
against the window frame. Simon had across his extended arm divers
articles of wearing apparel. These he laid with solemnity upon a couch
by the fire, and then, having dismissed the boys and observed that
Edward was awake, he bowed and hoped that the guest had slept well.
“Heavenly well,” said Edward dreamily. “Hot water, soap, and towels.”
“I hab tek de liberty, sah,” said Simon, “ob extractin’ yo’ uniform
from de room while you slep’. De mud whar we could clean off, we hab
cleaned off, en’ we hab pressed de uniform, but de sempstress she say
’scuse her fer not mendin’ de tohn places better. She say dat uniform
sut’n’y seen hard service.”
“She’s a woman of discernment,” said Edward. “The tatters are not what
troubles me. No end of knights and poets have appeared in tatters. But
I do feel a touch when it comes to the shoes. There’s nothing of the
grand manner in your toes being out. And had it ever occurred to you,
Simon, before this war, how valuable is a shoestring?” He sat up in
bed. “At this moment I would give all the silken waistcoats I used to
have for two real shoestrings.—What, may I ask, could you do for the
shoes?”
“King Hiram de cobbler, sah, he hab de shoes in han’. He shake he
haid, but he say he gwine do all he kin. De sempstress, too, she say
she gwine do her natchul bes’. But Miss Désirée, she say dat perhaps
you will give Marse Louis, what am at Grenada wif Gineral Van Dorn, de
pleasure ob sarvin’ you? She say de Mississippi River all ’roun’ Cape
Jessamine fer three days, en’ nobody gwine come heah less’n dey come
in gunboats, en’ you kin wear yo’ uniform away de third day—” Simon,
stepping backward, indicated with a gesture the apparel spread upon
the sofa. “You en’ Marse Louis, sah, am erbout ob er height en’ make.
Miss Désirée tol’ me so, en’ den I see fer myself. Marse Louis’s
evening clothes, sah, en’ some ob his linen, en’ a ruffled shu’t, en’
er pair ob his pumps dat ar mighty ol’, but yet better than yo’
shoes.—Dat am de bell-cord ober dar, sah, en’ ef yo’ please, ring when
you ready fer me ter shave you.”
Downstairs the last roses of the west tossed a glow into the Cape
Jessamine drawing-room. It suffused the high, bare, distinguished
place, lay in carmine pools upon the floor, glorified the bowls of
late flowers and made splendid the silken, heavy, old-gold skirt of
Désirée Gaillard. There was a low fire burning on the hearth. She sat
beside it, in an old gilt French chair, her hands resting upon the
arms. Folding doors between room and hall were opened. Désirée could
see the spacious, finely built stairs from the gallery landing down;
thus she had fair benefit of Edward Cary’s entrance. The candles had
been lighted before he came. Those in the hall sconces gave a
beautiful, mellow light. Désirée had made no effort to explain to
herself why all the candles were lighted, and why she was wearing that
one of her year-before-last Mardigras dresses which she liked the
best. She rarely troubled to explain her actions, to herself or to
another. All her movements were characterized by a certain imperial
sureness, harmony. If she merely wished—the Southern armies being held
in passionate regard by all Southern women—to do a ragged Virginia
private honour; if she wished, delicately, fleetingly, half-ironically
to play-act a little in the mist of flood and war; if she wished, or
out of caprice or in dead earnest, to make a fairy oasis—why, she
wished it! Whatever had been her motive, she possibly felt, in the
moment of Edward Cary’s appearance on the stair, that gown and lights
were justified.
He was a man eminently good to look at. Louis Gaillard, it appeared,
knew how to dress; at any rate, the apparel that Edward wore to-night
became him so well that it was at once forgotten. He was clean-shaven,
and Simon had much shortened the sunburnt hair.
Down the stair and across hall and drawing-room he came to her side.
“Did you ever get through the thorny wood and the briar hedge in the
fairy story? That’s what, without any doubt, I have done!”
Désirée smiled, and the room seemed to fill with soft rose and golden
lights. “_I_ don’t call it a thorny wood and a briar hedge. I always
see a moat with a draw-bridge that you have to catch just at the right
moment, or not at all—”
At table they talked of this or that—which is to say that they talked
of War. War had gripped their land so closely and so long; War had
harried their every field; War had marked their every door—all their
world, when it talked of this and that, talked only of some expression
on some one of War’s many faces. It might be wildly gay, the talk, or
simple and sad, or brief and grave, with tragic brows, or bitterer
than myrrh, or curiously humorous, or sardonic, or angry, or ironic,
or infinitely touching, or with flashing eyes, or with a hand that
wiped the drop away; but always the usual, customary talk into which
folk fell was merely War. So Désirée and Edward talked War while they
ate the delicate, frugal supper.
But when it was eaten, and he followed her back into the drawing-room,
they sat on either side the hearth, the leaping red and topaz flame
between them lighting each face, and little by little forgot to talk
of this and that.
It appeared that save for the servants she had had few to talk to for
a long, long while. There was a relief, a childlike outpouring of
thought and fancy caged for months. It was like the awakened princess,
eager with her dreams of a hundred years. They were dreams of a
distinction, now noble, now quaint, and always somewhat strange. He
learned a little of her outward life—of her ancestry, half French,
half English; of her mother’s death long ago; of her father, studious,
courteous, silent, leaving her to go her own way, telling her that he,
not she, was the rapier in action, the reincarnated, old
adventurousness of his line. He learned that she idolized her brother;
that, save for a year once in France and six weeks each winter in New
Orleans, she rarely left Cape Jessamine. He gathered that here she
reigned more absolute than her father, that she loved her life, the
servants, and the great plantation. It was as large almost as a
principality, yet even principalities had neighbours up and down the
river! He gathered that there had been visiting enough, comings and
goings, before the war. Other principalities had probably come
a-wooing—he hoped with passion to no purpose! He also was of the old,
Southern life; he knew it all, and how her days had gone; she was only
further South than his sisters in Virginia. He knew, too, how the last
eighteen months had gone; he knew how they went with the women at
home.
They sat by the jewelled fire and talked and talked—of all things but
this and that. War, like a spent thunder-cloud, drifted from their
minds. They did not continuously talk; there were silences when they
looked into the exquisite flame, or, with quiet, wide eyes, each at
the other. They were young, but their inner type was ancient of days;
they sat quiet, subtle, poised, not unlike a Leonardo canvas. Before
ten o’clock she rose and said good night and they parted. In the
panelled room Cary opened the window and stood gazing out. There was a
great round moon whitening a garden, and tall, strange trees. He saw
an opaline land of the heart, an immemorial, passion-pale Paradise,
and around it all the watery barrier of the flood.... Désirée, in her
own room, walked up and down, up and down, then knelt before her fire
and smiled to find that she was crying.
The next morning, although he was up early, he did not see her until
eleven o’clock. Then he came upon her as she quitted the wing in which
had been laid the crippled overseer. All around was an old, formal
garden, the day grey pearl, a few coloured leaves falling. The two sat
upon the step of a summer-house, and at first they talked of the
recession of the water and the plantation round which had kept her
through the morning. Then, answering her smiling questions, he told
her of his home and family, lightly and readily, meaning that she
should know how to place him. After this the note of last evening came
back, and with its thrilling sound the two fell silent, sitting in the
Southern sunshine, gazing past the garden upon the lessening crescent
of the flood.
Late in the afternoon, as he sat in a dream before an excellent old
collection of books, the door opened and she appeared on the
threshold, about her the cloak of the other night. He rose, laying
down an unopened book.
“I am going,” she said, “to walk down the avenue to look at the
levee.”
They walked beneath the slant rays, through the deepening shade.
Before them was the great river; turn the head and they saw, beyond
the rising ground and the house gleaming from the trees, the
encroaching backwater, the two horns of that sickle all but touching
the main levee. When they came upon this, out of the long avenue, the
cypresses behind them were black against the lit west, unearthly still
and dark against the gold. The river, too, was gold, a red gold, deep
and very wide and swift.
They stood upon the levee, and even his unaccustomed eye saw that the
danger and strain of the other night was much lessened, but that
always there was danger.—“The price of safety hereabouts is
vigilance.”
“Yes. To keep up the levees. Now and then, before the War, we heard of
catastrophes—though they were mostly down the river. Then, up and
down, everything would be strengthened. But now—neglect because we
cannot help it, and tremor in the night-time! Below Baton Rouge the
Yankees have broken the levees. Oh, the distress, the loss! If Port
Hudson falls and they come up the river, or Vicksburg and they come
down it, Cape Jessamine will be as others.” She drew her cloak close
for a moment, then loosened it, held her head high and laughed. “But
we shall win, and it will not happen!... If we walk to the bend
yonder, we shall see far, far!—and it is lovely.”
At the bend was a bench beneath a live-oak. The two sat down and
looked forth upon vast levels and shining loops of the river. From the
boughs above hung Spanish moss, long and dark, like cobwebs of all
time, like mouldered banners of some contest long since fought out.
The air was an amethyst profound.
For some minutes she kept the talk upon this and that, then with
resolution he made it die away. They sat in a silence that soon grew
speech indeed. Before them the golden river grew pale, the vast plain,
here overflowed, there seamed with huge, shaggy forests, gathered
shadow; above day at its latest breath shone out a silver planet.
Désirée shivered. “It is mournful, it is mournful,” she said, “at Cape
Jessamine.”
“Is it so? Then let me breathe mournfulness until I die.”
“The water is going down. Mingo says it is going down fast.”
“Yes. I could find it in my heart to wish it might never go down.”
“It will. I am not old, but I see how what—what has been pleasant,
dwindles, lessens—The road to Vidalia lies over there.”
“Yes. In the shadow, while the light stays here.”
Silence fell again, save for a bird’s deep cry in some canebrake.
Presently she rose and set her face toward the house. They hardly
spoke, all the way back, beneath the cypresses.
In a little while came night and candlelight. He found her in the
dress of the evening before, by the jewelled flame, ruby and amber.
They went into the next room, where there were tall candles upon the
table, and ate of the delicate, frugal fare. There was some murmured
dreamy talk. They soon rose and returned to the drawing-room. There
was a chess-table, and she proposed a game, but they played languidly,
moving the pieces slowly. Once their hands touched. She drew back; he
lifted his eyes, then lowered them. It is probable that they did not
know which won.
Again at ten, she said good night. Standing within the door he watched
her slowly mount the stair—a form all wrapped in gold, a haunting
face. At the turn of the stair there came a pause. She half turned,
some parting courtesy upon her lips. It died there, for his upward
look caught hers. Her face changed to meet the change in his, her body
bent as his strained toward her; so they stayed while the clock ticked
a quarter-minute. She was the first to recover herself. She uttered a
low sound, half cry, half singing note, straightened herself and fled.
The next morning again solitude and the drift of leaves in the garden
walks. He did not see her until the middle of the day, and then she
was somewhat stately in her courtesy, dreamy and brief of speech.
“Would he excuse her at dinner? There was a woman ill at the quarter—”
“I asked you to let me give you no trouble. Only the day is flying and
to-morrow morning I must be gone.”
“The water is not down yet!”
“Yes, it is, or all but so. I have been to see. I must go, you know
that—go at dawn.”
“I will be in the garden at four.”
But in the garden, she said it was sad with the cold, dank paths and
the fading roses. They came up upon the portico and passed through a
long window into the drawing-room. She moved to the hearth and sat in
her great, gilt chair, staring into a deep bed of coals above which,
many-hued, played the flames. There was in the room a closed piano.
“No; she did not use it. Her mother had.” He opened it, sat down and
sang to her. He sang old love-songs, old and passionate, and he sang
as though the piano were a lute and he a minstrel knight, sang like
Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli.
When he made an end and rose, she was no longer by the fire. She had
moved to the end of the room, opened the long window, and was out in
the sunset light. He found her leaning against a pillar, her eyes upon
the narrow, ragged, and gleaming ribbon into which had shrunk the
flood at Cape Jessamine.
For a moment there was silence, then he spoke. “Nice customs curtsy to
great kings,” he said, “and great love knows no wrong times and
mistaken hours. Absence and the chance of war are on their way. I dare
hold my tongue no longer. Moreover, you, too,—I believe that you, too,
know what this is that has come upon us! The two halves of the whole
real world must in some fashion know each other—I love you, Désirée
Gaillard—loved you when I saw you first, there on the river bank—”
He put out his hands. Hers came to them, unhesitatingly. She uttered
the same sound, half cry, half singing note, with which she had turned
upon the stair the night before. In a moment they had embraced.