The sunlight drifting through an avenue of live-oaks sifts dappled gold
upon the well-known gig that has splashed through miles and miles of
the waxy “buckshot” mud, and now winds slowly up the driveway to stop
before the broad white pillars of the “Big House.”
A dozen little negroes clamor for the lines, and with a friendly nod
to them the autocrat of autocrats gives his hand to “Ole Miss,” who is
standing at the open door.
“Ole Marse” sits with him in the library below, talking in subdued
tones and joining now and again in a familiar julep, brought, at
regular intervals, cold and dewy, by the serving man, Cæsar. And “Young
Marse,” with his head upon his hand, every nerve strained to its
tension, looks idly through the window upon the pulsing life without.
Then a feeble wail sets a pace to hurrying feet and smiling faces as
the great bell clangs in the “Quarters” the coming of “Little Marse.”
But hardly second in importance to the arrival of the little lord of
the domain is the advent of the Queen of the Nursery, who had been
installed from the “Quarters” many days before; for on her capacious
bosom the baby head of “Young Marse” had rested, and this, more than
likely, is the third generation of her subjects.
The turbaned head is held high and her sway is supreme, for no one
can do quite so well for “Baby” when his enemies attack him; her
cup and spoon can usually rout the most persistent, and hives and
whooping-cough fly ignominiously before her catnip and calimus tea.
The older children, turned over some time ago to the good graces of the
second nurse, that “Mammy” might have time to rest, cling about her
chair and pull at her skirts, looking with jealous eyes upon the tiny
bundle that has usurped the warm nest of her arms, and when at last the
little lord consents to sleep, and “Mammy” shoos the flies and draws
the bar, the young deposed, of flaxen locks and blue-checked apron,
with sleepy eyes borrows the nest a while, regardless of the clamor of
the others. “Mammy, tell a tale!”
And “Mammy” tells it; day after day she pours out the wealth of her
inheritance, as her kindred, the “Mammies” before her, have done, and
these children of children’s children listen with the same unfeigned
delight.
But “Baby” is wearing trousers now—has attained to the dignity of being
called by his own name, and “Mammy” is back in her cabin again, that
Mecca of childish desire, between which and the “Big House” a path is
worn by little pilgrims; for if “Mammy” is ailing there are flannels
and loaf-sugar to be brought, and there are always ash-cakes to be
baked, sweet-potatoes, goobers, chestnuts, or apples to be roasted by
“Mammy’s” hearth, and, if nothing else offers, even plain buttermilk
off her deal table, drunk from her cracked blue china bowl, tastes
better than any other.
Then, after a season, the stone-bruises, stubbed toes, and little cut
fingers are gone, and “Mammy’s” roll of old linen, with its familiar
turpentine and sugar, are never now disturbed. The bewildering mass of
curls that only “Mammy’s” hand could comb without a shower of tears,
together with the dainty buttoned pinafores, have faded too, somewhere,
for the college days have come and the first love affairs—those
strange, all-absorbing passions—and as “Mammy’s” lap, with its smooth
white apron and comfortable knees had been the receptacle of all broken
dolls and toys, so “Mammy’s” ear is the haven of youthful broken
hearts, and the same old stories are tenderly applied for the mending.
But time ripens, and the roof-tree is shaken of its fruit. First in joy
and first in sorrow, it is “Mammy” who shrouds the form of “Ole Miss,”
and now she looks longingly into the past.
A few short years that seem as days, and “Little Miss” smoothes the
folds of “Mammy’s” black silk, “saved against her burying,” and pins,
through blinding tears, a white rose above the still heart, and
“Mammy’s” daughter, fat and gentle, with “Mammy’s” own soft, crooning
voice, takes up the cradle song.
They romped together, these two, beneath the self-same oaks—“Little
Miss” and “Mammy’s” daughter—but “Little Miss” now wears a cap (she is
“Ole Miss,” too, to some down in the “Quarters”), and the folds of the
other’s turban are as full of comfortable dignity as the dusky mother’s
were.
“Little Miss,” still sweet and dainty in her dimity, smiles over her
netting and slips the beads upon the scarlet threads or sorts her
crewels in the shady porch, for at the other end, just out of sight,
the old split-bottomed hickory chair resumes its familiar “thump” to
the music of a negro voice.
Again it is “the dark of the moon,” and Satan is abroad in the
“Quarters,” and the good hoodoo who must beat the devil at his own game
is working wonders against him as he “splits the wind.” “Ole Cinder
Cat” sits by the hearth nightly, and the “devil’s little fly” buzzes
audibly in wondering childish ears.
The same old stories, ever witching, ever new, to the same old
chorus—“Tell another, Mammy!”
* * * * *
Another chorus calls to answering silence, for she is gone. The swaying
form, crooning in low rich voice, like some bronze Homer blind to
letters, a weird primeval lore into the ears of future orators, is
shut within the feudal past of the old plantation days, for the brown
breast that pillowed its brain and beauty is still forever, and that
South too is dead.
The worn split-bottomed chair is empty, filled with dust and years, for
it is we who seek to conjure with it now—we who have heard unwitting at
that shrine a classic that America may call her own.