The noontide bell at some distant cotton house sent a solemn note--like
an alarm--ringing across the lowlands. The warm, sweet smell of the
brakes almost overpowered the girls from the North. And lulling their
senses, too, were the bird-notes, seemingly from every tree and bush.
Long festoons of moss hung from some of the wide-armed trees. Here and
there, cleared hammocks were shaded by mighty oaks which may have been
standing when the first white settlers on this coast of the New World
established themselves at Georgetown, not many miles away.
Riding in the comfortable open carriage, behind a handsome pair of bay
horses, and driven by a liveried coachman with a footman likewise
caparisoned on the seat beside him, Ruth and Helen, as guests of Mrs.
Rachel Parsons and Nettie, had already come twenty miles from the
railroad station.
Despite the moisture and the heat, the girls from the North were
enjoying themselves hugely. The week that had passed since they had met
Nettie and her aunt at Old Point Comfort had been a most delightful one
for the chums.
The long railroad journey south from Richmond had been broken by stops
at points of interest, including New Bern, Wilmington, Pee Dee, and
finally Charleston. The latter city had interested the girls
immensely--quite as much as Richmond.
After two days there, the party had come back as far as Lanes and had
there taken the branch road for Georgetown, at the mouth of the Pee Dee
River, one of the oldest towns in the South, and around which linger
many memories of Revolutionary days. The guests would not see this old
town until a later date, however.
Leaving the train at a small station in the forest, they were met by
this handsome equipage and were now approaching the Merredith
plantation. Ruth, as silent as her companions, was contrasting in her
own mind this beautiful carriage and pair with the old Grogan barouche,
the knock-kneed horse, and Unc' Simmy.
"Two phases of the new South," she thought, for Ruth was rather prone to
a kind of mental problem that does not usually interest young folk of
her age. "Here is the progressive, up-to-date, money-making class
represented by Mrs. Parsons, reviving the ancient fortunes of her house.
While poor Miss Catalpa and her single faithful servant represent the
helpless and hopeless class, ruined by the war and--probably--ruined
before the war, only they had not found it out!
"The Southern families who are reviving will, in time, be wealthier than
they were under the old regime. But how many poor people like Miss
Catalpa there must be scattered through this Dixieland!"
The party soon came to where two huge oaks, scarred deeply by the axe,
intermingled their branches over the roadway.
"This is our gateway," said Mrs. Parsons. "Here is the beginning of the
Merredith plantation."
"Oh, Mrs. Parsons!" cried Helen, pointing to one side. "What is that
pole there? Or is it a dead tree?"
"A dead pine. And it has been dead more than a hundred years, yet it
still stands," explained the lady. "They say that to its lowest branch
was hung a British spy in Revolutionary times--'as high as Haman'; but
re'lly, how they ever climbed so high to affix the rope over the limb, I
cannot say."
She spoke to the coachman in a minute: "Jeffreys!"
"Yes, ma'am," replied the black man.
"Drive by the quarters." She said "quahtahs." "It will give the children
a chance to see us, and Dilsey and Patrick Henry won't want them coming
to the Big House and littering up the lawn."
"Yes, ma'am," said the coachman and swung the horses into a by-road.
All the drives were beautifully kept. If there chanced to be a piece of
grass in a forest opening, it was clipped like a lawn. This end of the
great plantation was kept as well as an English park. Occasionally they
saw men at work amid the groves of lovely shade trees.
Suddenly there burst upon their view a sloping upland, dotted here and
there with groups of outbuildings and stables, checkered by fenced
pastures in which sleek cattle and horses grazed. There were truck
patches, too, belonging to the quarters, where the negroes lived.
These whitewashed cabins, with their attendant chicken-runs and
pig-pens--all whitewashed, too--were near at hand. As the carriage swung
out of the forest, the hum of a busy village broke upon the ears of the
girls, as the sight of all this rich and rolling upland burst upon their
view.
The green trees and the green grass contrasted with the white cots made
a delightfully cool picture for the eye.
The mistress' equipage was sighted immediately and there boiled out of
the cabins a seemingly never-ending army of children and dogs. The dogs
were all of the hound breed, and the children were of one variety,
too--brown, bare-legged pickaninnies, about all of a size, and most of
them bow-legged.
But they were a laughing, happy crowd as they came tearing along the
lane to meet the carriage. The hullabaloo of the dogs and children
brought the mothers to the cabin doors, or around from their washtubs at
the rear of the cabins. They, too, were smiling and--many of them--in
clean frocks and new bandanas, prepared to meet "de quality."
And there were so many of them, bowing and smiling at "Mistis," as they
called Mrs. Parsons, and bidding her welcome! It was like a village
turning out to greet the feudal owner of the property. Mrs. Parsons
seemed to know all of them by name, and she shook hands with the older
women, and spoke particularly to some of the young women with babies in
their arms. Noticeably there were no children over seven or eight years
old at home; nor were there any young men or women, save the few married
girls with infants. Everybody else was at work in the fields, Ruth
learned. And she learned, too, in time, that the Merredith plantation
was one of the largest cotton farms in the state, and one of the most
productive.
A little later, however, as they rode on, the visitors learned that
there was something beside cotton grown on the estate. On the upland
they came to a field of corn. It extended farther than their eyes could
see--a waving, black-green, waist-high sea, its blades clashing like a
forest of green swords.
"How many acres in this piece, Jeffreys?" asked Mrs. Parsons, of the
coachman, seeing that the two Northern girls were interested.
"Four hundred acres, ma'am. I hear Mistah Lomaine say so."
"We passed huge corn and grain fields when we went West to Silver
Ranch," Ruth said. "But mostly in the night, I believe; and the corn was
not in the same stage of growth as this."
"Cotton is still king in the South," laughed Mrs. Parsons; "but Corn has
become his prime-minister. I believe some of our bottom lands will raise
even better corn than this."
They rode steadily on, having taken a considerable sweep around to see
the "quarters," and now approached the Big House. And it _was_ big! Ruth
and Helen never heard it called anything but the "Big House" by anybody
on the plantation.
It was set upon a low mound in a grove of whispering trees. The lawns
about it were like velvet; the grass was of that old-fashioned, short,
"door-yard" kind which finds root in many door-yards of the South and
spreads slowly and surely where the land is strong enough to sustain it.
It needs little attention from the lawnmower, but makes a thick, velvety
carpet.
The roots of some of the old trees had been exposed so many years that
their upper surface had rotted away, and in the rich mold thus made the
grass had taken root, upholstering low, inviting seats with its green
velvet.
The house itself--mansion it had better be called--was painted white, of
course, even to its brick foundation. The massive roof of the veranda
which sheltered the second-floor windows as well as those of the first
floor on the front of the main building, was upheld by six great fluted
pillars as sound now as when cut from an equal number of forest monarchs
and raised into place, a hundred years before.
On either side wings were built on to the main house, each big enough
for the largest family Ruth Fielding had ever known! What could possibly
be done with all those bedrooms upstairs was a mystery to her inquiring
mind until Nettie told her that, in the old slavery days, long before
the war, and when people traveled only on horseback and by coach, a
house party at the Merredith plantation meant the inviting for a week or
two of twenty-five ladies and as many gentlemen, and each had his or her
black attendant--valet, or maid--that had to be sheltered in the Big House
at night, although coachmen and footmen, and other "outriders" could
find room in the cabins, or stables.
Both wings were closed now; but the windows remained dressed, for Mrs.
Parsons would not allow any part of the old house to look ugly and
forlorn. Twice a year an army of colored women went through the empty
rooms and cleaned and scoured, just as though again a vast company were
expected.
The small retinue of house servants met the carriage at the foot of the
broad steps. They were mostly smiling young negroes, the men in livery
and the girls in cotton gowns, stiffly starched aprons, and white caps.
There was a broad, unctuous looking, mahogany colored "Mammy" on the top
step, and a gray-wooled, bent, old negro at the door of the carriage
when it stopped.
"Good day, ma'am! Good-day!" said the old man to Mrs. Parsons. "My duty
to you."
He waved away the officious footman and insisted upon helping the
mistress of the Merredith plantation down with all the pompous service
of a major-domo.
"We are all well, Patrick Henry," said Aunt Rachel. "Is everything right
on the plantation?"
"Yes'm; yes'm. I'll be proud to make my report at any time, ma'am."
"Oh, to-morrow, I pray, Patrick Henry," cried Mrs. Parsons. She ran
lightly up the steps and the big colored woman, waiting there with
smiling lips but overflowing eyes, gathered the lady to her broad bosom
in a bearlike hug.
"Ma honey-gal! Ma little mistis!" she crooned, rocking the white woman's
head to and fro upon her bosom. "Dilsey don't reckon she'll welcome yo'
here so bery many mo' times; but she's sho' glad of dishyer one!"
"You are good for many years more, you know it, Mammy Dilsey!" laughed
Mrs. Parsons, breathlessly.
"Here's Miss Nettie," she said, "and two of her school friends--Miss Ruth
and Miss Helen. Of course, there is no need to ask you, Mammy Dilsey, if
everything is ready for them?"
"Sho', chile!" chuckled the old negress. "Yo' knows I wouldn't fo'git
nottin' like dat. De quality allus is treated proper at Mer'dith. Come
along, honeys; dere's time t' res' yo'selfs an' dress fo' dinner. We
gwine t' gib yo' sech anudder dinner as yo' ain' seen, Miss Rachel,
since yo' was yere airly in de spring. I know bery well yo' been
stahvin' ob yo'self in dem hotels in de Norf all dishyer w'ile."