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GIRLS OF ’64
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
New YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: Three short raps upon the window pane.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GIRLS OF ’64
BY
EMILIE BENSON KNIPE
AND
ALDEN ARTHUR KNIPE
Authors of “A Maid of ’76,” “Polly
Trotter, Patriot,” etc.
ILLUSTRATED BY
EMILIE BENSON KNIPE
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1918
All rights reserved
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright, 1918
By The Macmillan Company
Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1918
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
I News from the North
II A Strange Guest
III A Glimpse of Mr. Lincoln
IV Unpacking Trunks
V Confidences
VI Red Strings
VII The Baying of the Hounds
VIII Increasing Mystery
IX The Next Morning
X A Visit
XI A Knock on the Window
XII The Man on the Roof
XIII A Friend in Need
XIV Miss Imogene Takes Charge
XV Uncertainty
XVI An Unexpected Disappearance
XVII Confidences
XVIII A Distressing Incident
XIX A Strange Encounter
XX A Debt to be Paid
XXI In Coulter Woods
XXII By Grapevine Telegraph
XXIII Secrets
XXIV Face to Face
XXV Explanations
XXVI Mr. Davis Makes a Speech
XXVII A Race Against Death
XXVIII Loose Ends
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Three short raps upon the window pane
A flag of truce, honored alike by the Confederacy and the Union
Young Stanchfield struggled to sit up
“Dorothea met a Union officer in Coulter Woods”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GIRLS OF ’64
CHAPTER I
NEWS FROM THE NORTH
Corinne twisted and turned before the mirror over the console table,
flicked a speck of powder from her sacque and stood back to regard
herself appreciatively. She felt her toilette to be extremely
distinguished when war deprivations were taken into account.
“I’m ready,” she drawled, addressing her cousin. “If we-all don’t want
to be late we might as well start. It’s ’most train-time.”
Harriot settled back in her chair and began to rock furiously.
“I don’t think I’ll go to the dêpot to-day,” she said finally.
Corinne looked at her indignantly.
“What did you let me take all the trouble to powder my nose for then?”
she demanded. “You know ma won’t let me go alone in that crowd, and
there’s sure to be some news.”
“Oh, bother the news!” Harriot murmured under her breath, unconsciously
turning her head to look in the direction of the kitchen.
“Harriot May!” cried Corinne disapprovingly, “you speak as if you didn’t
care about the victories of our great Confederacy.”
“But they aren’t always victories,” Harriot returned bluntly. “That’s
the trouble. We’re just as apt to hear that the hateful Yankees have
beaten us again and—and besides, I’d rather stay here, anyhow.” Once
more she turned an eye toward the cooking-quarters and sniffed.
“You’re not thinking of eating again?” Corinne demanded.
“Yes, I am,” Harriot answered blandly. “Aunt Decent’s going to make corn
meal poundcake and if we hang ’round the kitchen she’ll bake us each a
little patty-pan.”
“You’re such a child,” Corinne said, with the patronizing smile fifteen
bestows upon twelve; but if she expected Harriot to resent her grown-up
airs she must have been disappointed. The “child” suddenly jumped to her
feet as a faint odor of baking drifted into the room.
“Come on, Corinne!” she insisted, “Aunt Decent is taking the first pan
out of the oven now. Besides, I’ll coax her to give us some cush to feed
Saretta’s baby. She’s sure to be there after clabber.”
Corinne followed, still protesting; but cakes were not so plentiful in
the South during this, the second year of the war, that even a girl who
preferred to think herself very much of a young lady could afford to
scorn them.
“Well, the train’s always late anyway,” she murmured indulgently, as if
in excuse for letting her cousin have her own way.
Led by Harriot the two went toward the kitchen by a circuitous route as
if they had just happened to pass by. Outside the door was a group of
colored mothers and orphan-tenders, awaiting the special rations which
were doled out to little babies, and among them was Saretta with Aunt
Decent’s newest grandchild in her arms. Harriot, wise in the management
of the dusky autocrat, said nothing of patty-pans until she had stuffed
the baby. Then she broached the subject tentatively.
“Land sakes, but you is the eatin’est child!” Aunt Decent exclaimed
heartily, and that was sufficient assurance that there would be a
special portion of the coveted poundcake for the two girls.
“I wish I had gone over to the Polks. Cousin Sally would have walked to
the dêpot with me,” Corinne hinted with conscious cunning. Harriot, who
had no other cousins in Georgia, was decidedly jealous of Corinne’s many
relatives.
“I’ll go to the dêpot with you now,” Harriot said good-naturedly. “Not
that I care anything about your old train,” she added, as they started
off.
“Its arrival is the only thing that ever happens in this stupid little
town,” Corinne snapped.
“Maybe,” Harriot agreed, “but how any one can enjoy seeing a crowd of
ladies in black silk Talmas covered with dust, is more than I can
understand.”
“There are the wounded officers,” Corinne suggested, a trifle
self-consciously.
“Yes, all trying to look interesting,” Harriot answered, with more than
a trace of scorn in her tone.
Corinne regarded her askance for a moment.
“What in the world has come over you to-day?” she asked. “That’s no way
to speak of our heroes. If you weren’t my very own cousin—”
“Well, I am,” Harriot interrupted, “and I’m just as much for the South
as any one.”
“More so than some, I hope,” Corinne interrupted in her turn.
Harriot stopped short in her tracks.
“If you say a word about mother being a Submissionist, I’ll never speak
to you again,” she threatened seriously.
“I wasn’t going to mention Aunt Parthenia,” Corinne asserted, but the
younger girl shook her head as if she were not so sure of this.
“Just because mother didn’t think we should have seceded doesn’t make
her a traitor to the South,” she continued earnestly. “Besides, April is
rebel enough for a whole family.”
The girls walked on again in silence. They had touched upon a delicate
subject, and Corinne, with unusual good sense, held her tongue until
they reached the railroad shed where the expected train was just coming
to a stop.
A large crowd had already gathered to hear the latest news of the
outside world. Because the mails were seriously interrupted and few
newspapers were published in the South, the people of the towns and
villages were almost wholly dependent upon the information to be picked
up from travelers; so, for miles about the little town of Washington,
Georgia, the inhabitants of the district drove or rode in to meet the
daily train.
This particular afternoon there was an unusually large crowd clustered
around the wheezy engine with its string of shabby coaches.
“More wounded,” Harriot whispered, nodding toward a number of flat cars
attached to the end of the train.
“I don’t think so,” Corinne answered, a little excitedly. “They’re
filled with ladies and gentlemen, and there’s something going on. Lets
get closer.”
They elbowed their way through the press until they came within earshot
of a Confederate officer, who was speaking to the assemblage. His arm
was in a sling and over his shoulders he had a faded blanket shawl
which, with his threadbare gray uniform, gave him a most dilapidated
appearance. But his audience, well used to the sight of ragged soldiers,
listened with marked attention to his words.
“It has as much force as a soap-bubble,” the officer was saying as the
girls came within sound of his voice. “Just suppose Abe Lincoln took it
into his head that it was wrong to keep birds in cages. And then suppose
he issued a proclamation to France ordering her to open all her cage
doors and let out the birds. Does anybody think France would pay any
attention to it? Of course not! They would insist, first of all, that
the birds would starve if they were let out. Secondly, they would say it
was none of Lincoln’s business and, lastly, they would know, just as we
know, that the birds don’t want their freedom.”
“What has Abe Lincoln to do with French birds?” Harriot whispered.
“Hush!” Corinne admonished her, straining her ears to catch the next
words.
“Well, my friends,” the officer went on, “that’s the way it is with this
Emancipation Proclamation. You know, and I know, that our servants don’t
want to be free. They wouldn’t know what to do with freedom if they had
it—and it’s none of Abe Lincoln’s business anyway! What authority has he
over our great Confederacy? Not that much!” and he snapped his fingers
with a fine gesture of indifference. “No more than he has over France.
For two years he has been trying to beat us and now, ladies and
gentlemen, he’s getting desperate. This proclamation is his last move to
scare us. He knows at last that Cotton is King. And, let me tell you,
the Knights of the Golden Circle are not idle. The North is about ready
to give up. This proclamation doesn’t amount—”
The train gave a jerk and, starting off, put an end to his oratory. The
crowd cheered as the passenger cars moved slowly away to carry the news
to the next stopping-place along the line.
But there was a lack of heartiness in the shouts of applause, and a
rather silent group of people hurried toward their homes. Men looked at
each other with sober faces and shook their heads somewhat doubtfully.
“I’m going straight back to ma,” said Corinne, as the two girls turned
to retrace their steps.
“But the patty-pans!” Harriot exclaimed. “They’ll be done by the time we
get home.”
“Save mine till to-morrow,” Corinne answered. “Ma’s sure to want to talk
to Aunt Parthenia in the morning, and I’ll come over with her.”
The Stewarts and the Mays lived at opposite ends of the town so that the
girls separated immediately. Harriot, thinking of corn meal poundcake,
hurried to the cook-house. Perhaps because she feared to be tempted, she
put Corinne’s portion out of sight at once, then munching her own share,
went in search of her mother.
She had not been at all impressed by the harangue she had heard at the
station. That sort of speech-making was no new thing to her, and she had
failed wholly to grasp the significance of what the Confederate officer
had said. Nevertheless she knew that her mother would be interested in
any news arriving by the train and was ready enough to report what she
had heard.
The town house of the May family was a spacious building. On one side of
a wide hall were the parlors. On the other were the breakfast and state
dining-rooms. Back of these were various offices for the administration
of the estates. At each end of the dining-room, looms for homespun had
been set up; for the many slaves, both in town and on the plantations,
had to be clothed as well as fed. It was here that Mrs. May spent the
greater portion of her days at this time of year. The spinning-wheels
humming made an accompaniment to the clang of the battens; and several
old colored women, wearing gay bandanas, bent their heads over a basket
of cotton which had just been brought in. Aunt Decent’s daughter Isabel
was busily carding and near the great fire-place Jim’s Jimmy was
standing. It was his business to keep the fire going, and the heat made
the child so drowsy that he was not allowed to sit down, for fear he
would fall sound asleep and tumble into the flames.
As Harriot entered the room, Mrs. May stepped back and forth following
her thread before the loom, with a slow grace that brought to mind
pictures of stately minuets that might have been danced in years past
upon the very floor over which she moved so lightly.
“You’re just in time, my dear,” she called, catching sight of Harriot.
“I need some one to reel thread into hanks for me.”
Harriot set to work willingly.
“I’ve just come back from the dêpot,” she began, once the task was well
started. “There were a lot of people there to-day.”
“What news did you hear?” asked Mrs. May.
“Oh, nothing much,” Harriot replied. “There was an officer made a speech
about birds in cages and freedom and France. He was wounded in the arm,
but people didn’t seem to care about what he said. At least they didn’t
cheer nearly as much as I’ve heard sometimes.”
“Was it about the fighting?” Mrs. May’s tone was anxious, for she had
both a husband and a son in the Confederate army.
“No,” drawled Harriot, “it wasn’t interesting. It was all about old Abe
Lincoln and a Proclam—”
“Harriot,” Mrs. May interrupted abruptly, “suppose you run upstairs to
April and see if you can’t help her with her hair. She’s to take supper
at Pettigrew’s.”
“But mother,” Harriot began, surprised at this unusual request.
“Run along, honey,” her mother insisted. “And send Merry down to me.”
Somewhat puzzled, Harriot left the busy room and ran to the floor above,
entering her sister’s chamber without ceremony to find April standing,
slight, fair and very beautiful, while her brown maid, Merry, laced her
stays. Her wonderful blond hair had already been woven into an intricate
crown, and, at sight of it, Harriot flopped into a chair.
“Mother wants Merry,” she announced. “Don’t ask me why, ’cause I don’t
know.”
April regarded her young sister for a moment without speaking.
“Mother said I was to help with your hair. I knew you wouldn’t let me
touch your precious yellow wig,” Harriot went on. “But it wasn’t a bit
of use my telling her that. I suppose I might just as well go down
again.”
“If mother sent you up here, you’d better stay,” April remarked
knowingly. “Merry can go as soon as I’m laced.”
“All right,” agreed the good-natured Harriot, “though I don’t see why—.
Mammy says you’ll have a red nose ‘sho’ as you’he bohn’ if you wear your
things so tight.”
“And she says you won’t have ‘a toof in yoh haid’ if you eat so much
poundcake,” April retorted with a laugh. “You can go down to Old Miss,
Merry,” she added to the maid.
But the door had hardly closed upon Merry when April turned a serious
face to her sister.
“What were you blabbing that made mother send you up here?” she
demanded.
Harriot was genuinely surprised and injured.
“Not one earthly thing,” she declared stoutly. “Corinne and I went to
the dêpot to hear the news and I had just begun to tell mother about it.
I didn’t say a thing in the world.”
“What is the news?” April inquired anxiously. “Has Rosecrans—”
“I tell you I didn’t hear a thing about the war,” Harriot insisted, much
aggrieved. “If I had, it isn’t a crime to mention it, is it? Besides,
I’d only begun when mother sent me up to you. There was a man talking
about Abe Lincoln and a proclamation, letting the birds free or
something. I didn’t understand much of it.”
“What have Abe Lincoln’s proclamation to do with us?” said April
sharply, more to herself than to her sister.
At that moment Mrs. May came into the room, closing the door carefully
behind her.
“I have no doubt the proclamation is the promised emancipation of the
slaves, honey,” she suggested quietly, having overheard April’s
question. “I didn’t wish it mentioned before the women downstairs. There
is no use unsettling the quarters yet. But they’ll learn of it fast
enough; for, from now on, the negroes are free.”
“Mother!” exclaimed April passionately, “how can you say such things?
What does the South care for Lincoln’s proclamation? And as for the
slaves—they’ll do as they’re bid. They know they can’t escape the hounds
just because a miserable Yankee says they’re free.”
Mrs. May looked at her beautiful daughter in silence for a moment,
shaking her head gently. When she spoke it was with a note of sadness in
her voice.
“It hurts me to hear you talk like that, my child, even though I know
you don’t mean it. You are no more capable of sending the hounds after
one of our people than I am.”
“Oh, well, our servants will never leave us,” April replied with deep
conviction. “What difference does this proclamation make to us? Mr.
Davis is the President of our country, not Abe Lincoln.”
“I’m afraid you don’t understand, dear,” Mrs. May replied patiently. “As
I see it, this proclamation gives the Confederacy its death-blow.
England, which has been seizing slave ships and fighting slavery for
many years, cannot side with the South in this war when slavery is made
the open issue. Without her aid what shall we do? You know how short we
are already of necessities. If England refuses to supply us, how can we
go on?”
“Oh, but, mother, we must beat them,” April cried. “We shall find a
way.”
“Honey,” Mrs. May went on earnestly, “I want to prepare you for what is
coming. Remember how rapidly our resources are dwindling and—”
“Our soldiers are the bravest in the world,” April broke in vehemently.
“The Yankees can never beat them!”
“That may be true,” her mother admitted, “but they cannot fight without
powder for their guns. Think of the shifts we are already put to. Your
father has just written me to have the smoke-house floor dug up and
boiled for the salt that may be obtained. There is talk of sacrificing
the tobacco crop to get the niter in it. Wool is so precious that it is
against the law to kill a sheep—and look!” she went on, holding out her
slender hands stained with dyes. “In order to barely clothe our people I
must work as I never expected to in my life. Of that I do not complain,
but do you not see that this cannot go on indefinitely? For a year or
two we may manage to exist; but the end is certain. I want you to
realize it, my child.”
April trembled for a moment and then with a brave toss of her head she
lifted her eyes to her mother’s.
“I’m going to a party and I shan’t cry,” she insisted, struggling with
the emotions that threatened to bring hot tears. “We’re obliged to win!
We just must! I’ll wear Georgia jeans—I’ll starve for the cause. I would
die for it, mother, if it would help us to win!”
It was not sheer bravado that had brought forth this explosion. April
was quite sincere in what she said. The cause of the South was right and
holy in her eyes and she was ready to meet, with cheerfulness, any
sacrifice that might be demanded of her. To doubt for a moment a
successful issue of the struggle seemed to her like a confession of
disloyalty.
This her mother well understood, but she also had a fuller realization
of the issues at stake and the resources of the contending forces.
“My darling April,” she said gently, “I don’t want to spoil your party
but it is better that you should learn from me what this proclamation
means to the South. You will surely hear more of it tonight, but now it
will not come to you as a bitter surprise. Let us drop the matter for
the present and I’ll help you into this,” she continued, picking up from
the bed a skirt of ruffled pink tarleton. “Harry, light more candles.
We’ll be extravagant for once and take a good look at sister in all her
finery. It may be the last to run the blockade.”
Harriot sprang to her feet to light an improvised candle which consisted
of a corncob wrapped with a twisted wick dipped in resin and wax. As
there were no matches to be had she was forced to kindle it from the
small fire burning on the hearth.
But, as she stooped, April shook her head decidedly.
“No, Harry, don’t,” she cried, crossing the room hurriedly. “Just set
the logs blazing and you shall see me by fire-light and so save our
candles. I’m beginning to realize what is the matter with us-all of the
South. We’re ready enough with fine words or big brave deeds, but we
neglect the little things and so waste our resources. From now on, I
mean to make the small sacrifices that are needed. If we all do that, we
shall be able to endure to the end and win!”
April was barely seventeen, but she spoke with a fresh spirit of
resolution and sincerity, and there was a thoughtfulness in her
beautiful face that gave it a look of dawning maturity.
“And I’ll do my share, too!” Harriot exclaimed, carried away by her
sister’s enthusiasm. “I can do it, if April can. Hereafter I’ll not eat
so much poundcake—and I’ll see that Corinne doesn’t, either.”
Mrs. May smiled a little sadly, wishing, perhaps, that this willingness
to accept privations had been born of faith in another and better cause.