Billy and I came down from the North and opened a grocery store at
Jefferson Corners. It is a little store and there aren't many houses
near it--just the railroad station and a big shed or two. Beyond the
sheds a few cabins straggle along the road, and then begin the great
plantations, which really aren't plantations any more, because nobody
around here raises much of anything in these days. They just sit and
sigh over the things that are different since the war.
That's what Billy says about them. Billy is up-to-date and he has a
motor-cycle. He made up his mind when he came that he was going to put
some ginger into the neighborhood. So he rides miles every morning on
his motor-cycle to get orders, and he delivers the things himself unless
it is barrels of flour or cans of kerosene or other heavy articles, and
then he hires somebody to help him. At first he had William Watters and
his mule. William is black and his mule is gray, and they are both old.
It took them hours to get anywhere, and I used to feel sorry for them.
But when I found out that compared to Billy and me they lived on flowery
beds of ease, I stopped sympathizing. They both have enough, to eat, and
they work only when they want to. Billy and I work all the time. We have
our way to make in the world, and we feel that it all depends on
ourselves. We started out with nothing ahead of us but my ambitions and
Billy's energy, and a few hundred dollars which my guardian turned over
to me when I married Billy on my twenty-first birthday.
As soon as we were married, we came to Virginia. Billy and I had an idea
that everything south of the Mason and Dixon line was just waiting for
us, and we wanted to earn the eternal gratitude of the community by
helping it along. But after we had lived at Jefferson Corners for a
little while, we began to feel that there wasn't any community. There
didn't seem to be any towns like our nice New England ones, with
sociable trolley-cars connecting them and farmhouses in a lovely line
between. You can ride for miles through this country and never pass
anything but gates. Then way up in the hills you will see a clump of
trees, and in the clump you can be pretty sure there is a house. In the
winter when the leaves are off the trees you can see the house, but in
the summer there is no sign of it. In the old days they seemed to feel
that they were lacking somewhat in delicacy if they exposed their
mansions to the rude gaze of the public.
There was one mansion that Billy took me to now and then. It was empty,
and that was why we went. The big houses which were occupied were not
open to us, except in a trades-person sort of fashion, and Billy and I
are not to be condescended to--we had a pair of grandfathers in the
_Mayflower_. But that doesn't count down here, where everybody goes back
to William the Conqueror.
That great big empty house was a fine place for our Sunday afternoon
outings. We always went to church in the morning, and people were very
kind, but it was kindness with a question-mark. You see Billy and I live
over the store, and none of them had ever lived on anything but
ancestral acres.
So our Sunday mornings were a bit stiff and disappointing, but our
afternoons were heavenly. We discovered the Empty House in the spring,
and there was laurel on the mountains and the grass was young and green
on the slopes, and the sky was a faint warm blue with the sailing
buzzards black against it. Billy and I used to stop at the second gate,
which was at the top of the hill, and look off over the other hills
where the pink sheep were pastured. I am perfectly sure that there are
no other sheep in the whole wide world like those Albemarle sheep. The
spring rains turn the red clay into a mud which sticks like paint, and
the sheep are colored a lovely terra-cotta which fades gradually to
pink.
The effect is impressionistic, like purple cows. Billy doesn't care for
it, but I do. And I adore the brilliant red of the roads. Billy says
he'll take good brown earth and white flocks. He might be reconciled to
black sheep but never to pink ones.
We used to eat our supper on the porch of the Empty House. It had great
pillars, and it was rather awe-inspiring to sit on the front steps and
look up the whole length, of those Corinthian columns. Billy and I felt
dwarfed and insignificant, but we forgot it when we turned our eyes to
the hills.
The big door behind us and the blank windows were shut and shuttered
close. There were flying squirrels on the roof and little blue-tailed
lizards on the stone flagging in front of the house; and there was an
old toad who used to keep us company. I called him Prince Charming, and
I am sure he was as old as Methuselah, and lived under that stone in
some prehistoric age.
We just loved our little suppers. We had coffee in our thermos bottle,
and cold fried chicken and bread and butter sandwiches and chocolate
cake. We never changed, because we were always afraid that we shouldn't
like anything else so well, and we were sure of the chicken and the
chocolate cake.
And after we had eaten our suppers we would talk about what kind of
house we would build when our ship came in. Billy and I both have nice
tastes, and we know what we want; and we feel that the grocery store is
just a stepping-stone to better things.
The sunsets were late in those spring days, and there would be pink and
green and pale amethyst in the western sky, and after that deep sapphire
and a silver moon. And as it grew darker the silver would turn to gold,
and there would be a star--and then more stars until the night came on.
I can't tell you how we used to feel. You see we were young and in
love, and life was a pretty good thing to us. There was one perfect
night when the hills were flooded with moonlight. We seemed all alone in
a lovely world and I whispered:
"Oh, Billy, Billy, and some folks think that there isn't any God--"
And Billy put his arm around me and patted my cheek, and we didn't say
anything for a long time.
It was just a week later that Lady Crusoe came. I knew that some one was
in the house as soon as we passed the second gate. The door was still
closed, and the shutters were not opened, but I heard a clock strike--a
ship's clock--with bells.