AN OLD PLANTATION HOUSE.
General DeKay's house was on a slight knoll overlooking in one
direction the Alabama river, and a broad stretch of fertile cotton
lands, whilst every other view was lost in the dense shadows of
semi-tropical woods. The building was wholly wanting in
architectural beauty, yet it was picturesque enough, with its wide
verandas and tall, heavy, stuccoed columns, its many-gabled roof and
huge stack of chimneys. Tall magnolia trees grew about it, vines
clambered over it, and its small-paned, many-mullioned windows and
open halls, gave it an air of old-fashioned conservatism and
hospitality quite in a line with what one has always read and heard
of southern country life among the wealthy planters of the Gulf
States. Spaciousness was the most marked feature of the building.
The rooms were many and large, arranged for the comforts of unlimited
light and air. When the windows and doors were all thrown open, a
breeze blowing from any quarter flowed through the house with
unchecked freedom. The floors were of ash, mostly uncarpeted, and
the walls and ceilings were heavily paneled with oak. Wide winding
stairways and huge fire-places, cumbrous chandeliers and sconces,
together with what appeared an over-crowded amount of massive
old-time furniture, suggested a formal stateliness rather out of
keeping with that freedom of welcome which was and is the distinctive
charm of southern hospitality. The mansion had been built and
furnished long before the war, in the most prosperous and extravagant
days of slavery, when the planter knew no limit to his ability to
make and spend and when he set no bound to the number of his guests
or the length of their stay under his roof. The dark gray stucco and
weather-beaten shingles, together with the old-time arrangement of
the doors and windows, gave to the building a very ancient look, as
if it might have stood there since a time when men lived as did the
old fighting and feasting barons of medieval England. Bucks' antlers
hung in the hall, along with heavy rifles and fowling pieces, and a
few striking ancestral portraits looked down from the dark walls. It
had known much revelry of a thoroughly proper sort, this grand old
home of the DeKays, and its inmates, for several generations, had
exerted a marked influence in the social and political affairs of the
state. The present owner had been a fighting general in the
confederate army and had won by heroic bravery the right to his
distinguished military title.
When the party from Birmingham reached this charming old house by the
river, it was late in the afternoon. Several other guests had
already arrived from Montgomery, Pensacola and Mobile. A corps of
obsequious and clever negro servants, of both sexes and various ages,
were ready to attend all comers. The host, a slender man of middle
height, wearing a gray military beard, greeted every body with low
bows and profuse words of welcome, whilst his rather stout and
altogether good and motherly wife had a way that was welcome itself.
Reynolds and Moreton were given rooms adjoining and connected by a
door, their windows looking down a long shining reach of the
reed-bordered river. An ideal place to sit and smoke, Moreton
thought, as he lighted a cigarette and drew a chair so that he could
watch the silvery winged kite sailing about in the distance, its
forked tail and small head giving it the effect of a fanciful
Japanese design wavering on the background of blue-gray sky. A flock
of domestic geese were on the river, floating idly, now and then
lifting their wings and flapping them rapidly and screaming in
clamorous concert. Wide fields, gently rolling, and distinctly
showing the ridged and parallel rows of cotton and corn stalks, swept
away almost to the horizon, bounded on one hand by the river, and on
the other by a thick wood, where even the deciduous trees still
retained a trace of summer greenery. Something in the air suggested
the sea, and a sensation, as of extreme remoteness and isolation,
took possession of Moreton's mind. It was his first experience of
life on a low-country plantation. The idyllic simplicity, quietude
and serenity impressed him as much as did the stateliness and
amplitude. Here was an estate of thousands of acres--many miles in
extent--bearing on its surface all the marks of almost primitive
modes of husbandry. Worm fences, shallow plowing, the use of hoe and
wooden rake; gates with pins and sockets instead of latches,
clap-boards instead of shingles and plank, and so on throughout the
gamut of bucolic appurtenances long since discarded in thrifty and
progressive regions. But beyond all this, there was that
indescribable air of isolation from the rest of the world, as if the
plantation were an independent self-sufficient hereditament of the
DeKays, owing no allegiance to any power outside its boundary lines.
No other house, save the small cabins of negro tenants scattered here
and there, was visible. The estate was too large to admit of
neighbors.
When Moreton and Reynolds went down to the drawing-room they found
themselves in the midst of a company composed largely of gentlemen,
there being but four ladies besides the hostess. Miss Noble was
surrounded by a group of young sportsmen freely discussing hunting
and shooting topics, her bright, strong face and Juno form showing at
their best. A tall young woman, a Miss Beresford from Montgomery,
whose father had been governor of the state--and whose brother, Mr.
Mallory Beresford, a noted shot, was present--stood near a window in
conversation with Mr. Noble and General DeKay. But the most striking
group in the room was composed of Mr. Mallory Beresford and two
ladies, one a quick-spoken, alert, rather faded looking blonde, whose
lips could not cover her irregular teeth, the other a pale,
sweet-faced, almost slight young person, whose bearing, though
decidedly womanly and dignified, had a girlish charm wholly
indescribable. The blonde was speaking in a rapid manner, and her
words, sharply accentuated, reached the ears of Reynolds:
"Oh, I am really not a guest," she was saying, "I invited myself. I
came to gather material for a letter to our paper. I begged the
privilege of General DeKay. A description of a shooting-party on a
genuine old Southern plantation is a rare find for a correspondent.
I feel that I am in grand luck." Her gestures amounted to
gesticulations.
"Ah, Miss Crabb, what journal do you represent?" inquired Mr.
Beresford in a voice modulated to the gentlest southern inflections.
"The Ringville _Star_, of Ringville, Indiana. I am the associate
editor," she glibly responded.
Reynolds heard this much with his eyes fixed on the face of the other
woman whose smile had that rare quality of sweetness suggesting
sadness, and whose large, soft blue eyes beamed with a tenderness and
truthfulness that seemed in some way touched with well repressed
trouble. There are faces whose expression will at first sight
suggest some secret story of grief or wrong or regret. Sometimes a
high order of beauty will, of itself, carry with it, as the flower
carries its perfume, a haunting reminder, or half-reminder, of the
subtle ways of fate. Reynolds was aware that General DeKay was
coming across the room to meet him, but he could not tear his gaze
from the young woman's lovely face.
"I haven't presented you to my niece," said the General, taking the
young man's arm. "She is really my daughter now, for I have made her
my heir. Haven't much left for her to inherit, however, save a good
old name."
For a moment Reynolds' hand closed over the warm, dainty fingers
extended towards him, and he bowed low before Mrs. Ransom--Agnes
Ransom, a name that was soon to become one of thrilling sweetness to
him.
"Oh, it's very pleasant, in many ways, to belong to the press," Miss
Crabb was saying. "One can go every where and see every thing. The
railroads give us free passes and the hotels put our rates to the
lowest. For instance, how could I ever have found my way into this
delightful house and this charming company, if I hadn't carried the
magic of the press with me?" She ended with a rather musical laugh.
Her question was one that Beresford dared not attempt to answer, for,
in fact, he knew of no other way by which she could have gained an
entrance to this secluded and exclusive place. It chanced that he
knew how the editor of a Montgomery paper had interested himself in
Miss Crabb's behalf and begged General DeKay to extend her the
privilege of "writing up" the shoot.
"She seems to be an excellent young woman, and then her paper is
hopelessly obscure. You needn't fear you will ever hear of it again,
unless she sends you a copy," the editor urged, "and I feel a sort of
fraternal responsibility for her freedom of the country while she's
here. We can't be too tender in our treatment of Northern editors.
Whatever we do offensive to the least one of them will be trumpeted
to the four winds by them all."
Beresford very much desired to talk with Mrs. Ransom, but the glib
representative of the _Star_ went on so rapidly that he could find no
chance for withdrawing his attention. Then when Reynolds appeared on
the scene all hope faded out.
"You are a fine shot, Mr. Beresford, I presume," continued Miss
Crabb, "kill birds on the wing?"
"I believe I am a fair shot," he answered, with a true sportsman's
faith in the impressiveness of modesty. "I shoot well enough to
enjoy the sport."
"I saw Captain Bogardus and Dr. Carver shoot together once," she
said, "and it was just lovely. They hit most every time--little
glass balls thrown out of a trap. It was extraordinary."
Reynolds and Mrs. Ransom had moved away. It was a great relief to
Beresford when dinner was announced. At any other time he might have
been able to bear, and even enjoy Miss Crabb's rapid and versatile
conversation, but now that Agnes Ransom was seemingly absorbed in
listening to this dark, handsome stranger, he could not keep his wits
about him. Miss Crabb had to do all the talking, a thing she did not
seem to regard as a hardship.
"There is a veritable ruin near here, I am told," she said, "a
picturesque old heap, the remains of a grand mansion, on a bluff by
the river. I should very much like to go and see it before I return
to Montgomery. Do you know any thing about it?"
"No, I regret that I have not the pleasure. I believe I have never
heard of it," he answered. "General DeKay should be able to inform
you." And so he conducted her to the host and hastened to another
part of the room, conscious of having been guilty of a petty turn.
Moreton had joined the group of which Miss Noble was the light,
whilst Reynolds and Mrs. Ransom had found their way to Miss
Beresford, whose ultra Southern face and figure were supplemented by
conversational graces strikingly suggestive of a social era almost
forgotten, save among the most conservative people of the low
country. She was tall and dark, with regular features, large, rather
expressionless black eyes and straight black hair. Mrs. Ransom
introduced Reynolds, and then dinner was announced.
"This is a gentlemen's party," Miss Beresford said, on the way to the
dining-room, "and it has been arranged that the ladies shall act as
waiters, and we beg you not to criticise our methods too severely--we
are not perfectly trained to the work."
"One who has been for several years living in the family of a
mountaineer, as I have, should not be in a criticising mood,"
responded Reynolds; "how shall such an one presume to judge whether
or no you balance a tray artistically?"
He spoke lightly, but the word mountaineer, as he uttered it, called
up with electrical swiftness, a thought that sent a strange thrill
through him. A low, pathetically plaintive voice seemed to speak to
him in the mountain dialect. He saw a little coarsely-clad form
leaning on the gate at White's, with the pale starlight glimmering on
its upturned face.
As Miss Beresford had said it was to be, the dinner was served by the
ladies, who passed behind the chairs of the gentlemen, flitting
nimbly back and forth, receiving the viands from the hands of negro
servants at the door of an ante-room, and presenting them to the
guests. It was a study worthy of an artist's handling, that ample
dining-room, with its curiously carved panels of oak, its antique
mahogany side-board, its ponderous brass chandeliers and its
high-backed chairs. Even Miss Crabb, as she actively busied herself
with the part of the duties that fell to her share, showed to
picturesquely good effect amidst such foils to her vivacious face and
restless energy.
She was, by temperament and education, a person not likely to slight
any opportunity of furthering her own plans, no matter how great the
breach of small proprieties involved in the act. Even as she
brightly and smartly hurried hither and thither around the table, she
was thinking of how her experiences and observations here at the
DeKay mansion would look in the pages of a certain magazine, if only
she could get it accepted, with a number of picturesque, ultra
Southern illustrations, and with her name appended in full: Sara
Annah Crabb. She imagined the stir such an event would cause in
Ringville, where as yet her genius was not especially admired. She
nursed a dream of sudden fame quite masculine and muscular, so to
speak, which would enable her to get even with the male editors who
had so often made sport of her prose and verse and even of her name.
She was a good girl, honest, conscientious and full of kindness, but
she had had a very hard struggle with life, and she was mightily
ambitious. The adroitness with which she now and then slipped from
her pocket a little note-book and pencil and the rapidity with which
she jotted down certain memoranda of what she saw or heard prevented
much notice being given to the incivility by either host or guests.
Indeed she had a quiet, semi-furtive celerity that, coupled with what
may be called an insignificance of manner, neutralized any vulgarity
which otherwise would have been observable to an offensive degree.
Then, too, she talked so rapidly and volubly that if one looked at
her at all one must have been wholly occupied with what her lips were
doing. It was a wonder how she could impress one as being a very
quiet person and yet be skipping about and talking like that.
She was a revelation to Moreton. She gave him a glimpse of American
intellectual life in the crude state exemplified from a feminine
standpoint. He had heard of and read of the strong-minded women of
the western continent, but here was the first instance that had come
within his view. Strange to say, he rather liked her. Her freedom
was racy of the West, the breezy, broad, grassy, fertile West, where,
as he imagined, the buffaloes ventured into the outskirts of the
cities and where the men took their guns with them to church.
Perhaps he did not imagine this, after all, but the spirit of it was
in his thoughts. She seemed to him a fair exponent of society molded
by such surrounding. He felt with æsthetic nicety how, turning from
Miss Crabb's harmless inquisitiveness, chic and crude vim, the lines
of feminine force and beauty, by comparison, were graded through a
thousand changes to reach such perfection as he perceived in Miss
Noble. He even found himself chivalrously attacking providence for
showing such a difference in bestowing gifts upon the two girls. Why
should Miss Crabb be so tall and angular and sallow, so lacking in
the lines of grace, so sharp-voiced and ugly? Why could she not have
been rich, at least? Poor girl! she must carry so much while Miss
Noble had beauty, health, grace, riches.
The windows were open, allowing a gentle ripple of air through the
room, charged with a woodsy freshness and that grateful balm always
present on warm winter evenings in the south. Once when Mrs. Ransom
leaned over Reynolds' shoulder in performing some needed service, the
loose end of a simple ribbon at her throat was blown lightly against
his cheek and he caught the merest waft of violet perfume from the
flowers on her breast. It was a slight thing, but it was to him the
sweetest part of the dinner.
[Illustration: It was a slight thing, but it was to him the sweetest
part of the dinner. _Page 88_.]
Women appear to be little aware, as a rule, of the powerful influence
they may wield over men by their sweet negative qualities as well as
by their sweet positive ones. For instance, the absence of a high
harsh voice is next in value to the presence of a gentle and low one.
A quiet, modest shyness of manner may be apparent from the total
absence of any angular self-assertion rather than from the actual
existence of the manner itself. Hence it is that most women who
fancy themselves strikingly attractive to men, are really quite the
reverse, whilst it is often the case that the shy, sensitive woman
who shrinks from self-display, wins admiration from the other sex
without possessing any positive qualities especially charming. With
the approach of Mrs. Ransom, a half-formed sense of satisfaction and
subtle delight crept into Reynolds' bosom, as if with the fragrance
of the flowers she wore he breathed in a rarer and more precious
element exhaled by her own flower-like nature. It is good for a man
to be able to keep undulled his susceptibleness to such delicate
influences, for thereby his nature enriches and sweetens itself. The
crucial test of virility of the highest order is that of its
sensitiveness to the finest and purest demands of woman's nature.
The man's soul has lost its morning freshness whose nerves do not
tingle response to the least touch of the most ethereal breath of
feminine sweetness, sincerity and beauty, and he is a brute who
pauses to trace his susceptibility to some gross origin.
"It is quite charming to dine under such ministration," said
Reynolds, while receiving some delicate dish from the steady little
hand, "but I should----"
"No," she interrupted with a grave, sweet smile, "do not say the
rest. We think it quite fitting. My uncle at first refused to have
any ladies included in the party; but I insisted on having one or two
of my dearest friends, and it is agreed that we are not to be
considered as forming any part of the company."
She passed on, without giving him any chance for further words.
Beresford, who sat opposite, begrudged every syllable she had uttered.
All around the table the conversation was of field sports, adventures
with dog and gun and prospects for the morrow's shooting. General
DeKay and Mr. Noble, as veterans, led the discussions, the banker
giving fluent and graphic accounts of his experiences in the Maine
and Michigan woods, the General responding with racy bits of
adventure in the game regions of Louisiana and Florida. Men who like
field sports are, as a rule, earnest, healthy, vivacious fellows,
fond of good cheer, with a decided leaning towards making the best of
every thing. Such company as that around the board at the DeKay
mansion, was, therefore, one to enjoy to the full the superb feast
and all its attendant freedom from formality. The ladies retired
when the cigars came in, leaving General DeKay and Mr. Noble to test
some old brandy, while the younger men sipped a milder beverage,
under the white wreaths of Cuban tobacco smoke. Two or three negro
men-servants had quickly cleared the table, and now moved noiselessly
about, or stood like white-aproned ebon statues, gazing thirstily
upon the sparkling glasses.
Meanwhile the ladies were having their own pleasant dinner in the
breakfast room, Miss Crabb entertaining them with a vivid account of
some of her experiences as a correspondent and editor. Her sketches
had a breadth and freedom, all the more fascinating to the Southern
part of her audience, on account of the impressions they gave of a
field of woman's labor unknown in the dreamy land of cotton and
sugarcane, magnolias and mocking-birds. Miss Crabb was very earnest
and sincere, deeply impressed with the importance and influence of
her profession, and her straight forward manner of talking, along
with a perfectly evident good-heartedness, won a peculiarly qualified
admiration and respect from the majority of her listeners. Her
effect with Miss Noble was quite different. The shrewd, wide-awake
Northern girl knew very well how purely a matter of business Miss
Crabb was making of the whole affair, and how like a dissecting-knife
her pen would be. She sympathized with the young journalist,
however, and silently hoped that she might make a success of her bold
effort to penetrate to the inner heart of this old, exclusive
Southern social circle, the picturesque charm of which seemed to
hover like an atmosphere in the quaint, dingy, airy room.
All the doors and windows were open and the night breathed through
the house, bearing the pungency of the men's tobacco in faint traces
to the breakfast room, and presently the sound of a banjo along with
the mellow, barbaric voice of a negro singer, filled the place.
There was almost uproarious applause from many manly mouths. Uncle
Mono was ending up the feast with his favorite song:
"De raccoon am a cunnin' ting,
He rammel in de dahk,
Wid nuffin' 'tall fo' to 'stu'b he mind,
Tell he yer my 'coon-dog bahk!"
He was a jolly-faced, jet black old fellow, with a great shock of
grizzly wool on his head, a comically flexible mouth, and dusky eyes
that danced to the rapid time of his music.
It was the merest chance that suggested Uncle Mono and his banjo, but
if it had been pre-arranged, as in a play, that his two or three
humorous songs and his one pathetic love-ditty should close the
evening's festivities, it would have been in accord with the highest
art. The almost rude yet wholly fascinating carvings on the
time-stained panels of the dining-room, seemed to especially favor
the effect of such lyrical savageness and grotesquerie.
The impression upon Moreton's mind was strange, almost weird. When
all was over and he was alone in his room, he leaned back in a chair,
with his feet thrust out of the open window, and gazed into the soft
sky with a haunting sense of how suddenly and far he had been removed
from the glare and show and polite tumult of his own world. It was
all very fascinating, this isolation and decay, these soft-tongued
women, these knightly, half-grave, half-hilarious men, this strain of
music from Dahomey.