A VISIT
Afterward Dorothea thought how curious it was that Corinne’s complaint
of the “hateful English” had annoyed her so little. At the time she only
felt abashed that the plans to surprise Harriot’s cousin with their
finery seemed to have fallen flat. Indeed, Corinne’s announcement was a
good deal like a dash of cold water in her guests’ faces; but she was
evidently so much impressed by this latest war news that she could think
of nothing else. It was as if she did not see Dorothea at all, and was
for going on excitedly when Harriot cut her short rather tartly.
“Corinne, this is my cousin, Dorothea Drummond,” she explained. “Her
father is English, but she’s for the South no matter what their
Government may do. And anyway it is our duty to be polite to the
stranger within our gates.”
Corinne smiled on Dorothea and for the first time seemed to realize that
the girls before her deserved a more careful scrutiny. “I’m so glad
you’ve come to visit us,” she said, pleasantly enough, but quite
formally. “I’m afraid you will find us very much upset since the war and
quite behind the fashion.”
“I hadn’t noticed it,” Dorothea answered with a glance at Harriot, who
switched her wide skirt so that her cousin could not fail to observe it.
Corinne, by this time, had begun to realize that this was no ordinary
visit and her eyes widened as she grasped the magnificence of Harriot’s
apparel.
“I see Miss Drummond has been running the blockade,” she remarked by no
means cordially. “And you seem to have grown up very fast, Harriot. You
know,” she went on, turning to Dorothea with her most patronizing air,
“we always think of Harriot as a little girl who cares more for cakes
and candy than anything else.”
If this was said to embarrass her cousin it had quite the opposite
effect.
“Oh, that reminds me. Where is Aunt Cora?” she asked with an eager tone
in her voice. “I think she wants to see us.”
“My mother is much upset over this news from England,” Corinne replied
rather severely, making no move to invite them into the house. “You
don’t seem to comprehend the importance of it, Harriot. What we are
going to do now that the British have refused to let us fit out vessels
in their ports I don’t see. You understand, don’t you, Miss Drummond?”
She asked the question as if it was hardly to be expected that the
youthful Harriot could appreciate so mature a matter.
“Of course she understands and so do I,” Harriot answered promptly. “But
we’ll get on somehow. England is not the only country in the world. You
don’t suppose our great Confederacy is so easy to defeat as that, do
you?”
“‘Our great Confederacy!’” Corinne wailed. “They’ve insulted us by
calling it the ‘so-called Confederacy,’ as if it was nothing and we
hadn’t any right to it.”
“I don’t think it matters what they call it,” Dorothea remarked, trying
to seem sympathetic. She could not help feeling that Corinne lacked
sincerity and that she was just repeating, parrot-like, what she had
heard others say.
“Come on, let’s go in,” Harriot said, moving toward the door.
“Yes, do come in.” Corinne’s invitation was not enthusiastic, but
Harriot, at least, cared nothing for that. “Ma will want to see you.
She’s having a trying time making up her mind what things she ought to
take with her.”
“Take with her?” echoed Harriot, standing in the doorway. “Where’s she
going?”
“She doesn’t quite know,” Corinne returned. “Either to Mexico or Brazil.
She hasn’t decided yet, but now that the South is beaten there isn’t any
place in this country for ladies and gentlemen to live. At least that’s
what Ma says.”
“Fiddlesticks!” Harriot muttered, and marched into the house.
They found Mrs. Stewart in the parlor, sewing as if her life depended
upon her speed.
“Harriot, my love, I’m overjoyed to see you,” she greeted her niece in a
tearful voice, hardly looking up from her work. “I’m making a running
bag to tie inside my hoops. I shall put my diamonds in it when I go to
Mexico. I suppose your mother has everything ready to leave?”
“Why, no, Aunt Cora,” Harriot replied, going over and kissing the cheek
upturned for her salute. “We hadn’t heard of this English insult, but I
don’t think it will make any difference to us. I’ve brought my cousin,
Dorothea Drummond, to call on you.”
“How do you do, my dear,” Mrs. Stewart murmured, stopping long enough to
look up at Dorothea and hold out a couple of fingers. “You come among us
in sad days. I don’t know when we shall start, but it can’t be long now.
Do you know anything about Brazil, by any chance?”
Dorothea confessed that she did not.
“It seems very hard to find anybody that does,” Mrs. Stewart went on, in
the same melancholy way. “And yet Brazil is quite a well-known place,
I’m told. And it certainly sounds more interesting than Mexico. It makes
me think of birds, though I don’t know why. However, we shall soon be
flitting somewhere like the birds. And there’s so much to be done. I was
going to bury the silver yesterday; but then it occurred to me that I
would have to dig up the whole garden to hide the spot from the negroes,
and I really didn’t feel equal to it last night.”
“Aunt Cora,” Harriot cried, “how can you say such things? You’ll give
Dorothea such a wrong impression. You know our servants are all loyal.”
Mrs. Stewart wagged her head doubtfully over her sewing.
“I’m not so certain, honey,” she insisted. “They have grown very
insolent of late—but what’s the difference now? My only trouble is that
I can’t make sure where we shall find the best society, in Brazil or in
Mexico. I had made up my mind to London, but of course that’s out of the
question now.”
“I should think it was!” Corinne cut in sharply.
“I don’t fancy you’d find the society in London much changed,” Dorothea
could not refrain from remarking.
“Perhaps not,” Mrs. Stewart replied doubtfully, “but it would never be
the same to me. Under the circumstances I should not care to grace the
London drawing rooms—not after the news we have just received. But let
us forget our troubles for a while if we can. Ring the bell, honey,” she
went on to her daughter, “and order cake and wine. There is just one
comfort I shall get out of this. I shall not hoard any longer. When I
leave Washington I don’t intend to leave anything behind me for the
beggarly Yankees to eat or drink.”
Harriot nudged Dorothea.
“Fruit cake,” she whispered as Corinne pulled the bell rope. Aloud she
said, “I don’t see, Aunt Cora, what difference this English news makes.
We all know that one Southerner is worth ten Yankees.”
“Do you really think so, my dear?” her Aunt asked anxiously. “In that
case perhaps I’d better not be so lavish. Corinne, you might go with
Alice. Give her a glass of scuppernong wine for each of us and some seed
cakes. I’ll save the fruit cake a little longer.”
She handed her daughter the keys to the store-room and Dorothea could
scarcely contain her laughter at the sight of Harriot’s disgusted face
as she watched Corinne hurry out of the room.
“Did you ever think, Mrs. Stewart,” Dorothea began mischievously, “of
quilting gold coins into a petticoat? They say you can carry a great
deal of money that way and never be suspected.”
At once Mrs. Stewart’s fears were revived.
“That is a very good idea, my dear,” she commented. “Harriot, my love,
run and tell Corinne to bring us the fruit cake after all. We had much
better enjoy it than have the Yankees gobbling it up.”
Harriot did not wait to hear the end of the sentence. She was not minded
to tarry and give her aunt an opportunity to change her mind once more.
“Honey,” Mrs. Stewart began at once, the moment they were alone, “I sent
Harriot away with Corinne on purpose. I have had some news that I am at
a loss to know how to break to the family, and perhaps you can make some
suggestion. It is not a matter to be gossiped about. Mrs. Hendon was
buried yesterday afternoon!”
She stopped and looked at Dorothea as if she expected some demonstration
of overwhelming surprise on the part of the young girl.
“Is that Mr. Lee Hendon’s mother?” Dorothea asked calmly.
“Yes, my dear,” came the hurried answer. “You’ve heard of the situation
with April, of course? You couldn’t be in the town five minutes without
hearing of it, I’m sure.”
“Yes, I have heard of it,” said Dorothea. “Now that his poor mother is
dead, everything will be all right, won’t it?”
“You would think so, wouldn’t you?” Mrs. Stewart hurried on, “but that’s
the awkward part of it. President Davis has passed a law that every
white man of proper age who doesn’t report for military duty is liable
to death as a deserter. You see what that means?”
“No, I don’t,” Dorothea confessed.
“Well, my love, it’s plain enough,” Mrs. Stewart explained, as if to a
very stupid child. “Lee Hendon never went back home from his mother’s
grave after the funeral yesterday afternoon. He has disappeared
completely. No one knows where he is—and there can be only one
explanation.”
“You mean he has disappeared in order not to fight for the South?”
Dorothea asked earnestly. She remembered the face she had seen at the
window the night before and now realized the reason for the agony it
expressed. He was alone, this poor Lee Hendon, with whom she had
instinctively sympathized when first she had heard of him. He had
stopped to see his sweetheart for the last time and then— But here her
thoughts came to a sudden stop. April had been on the porch, too, last
night. Of a sudden Dorothea thought she saw a clear explanation of all
that had seemed mysterious to her. April was not a “Red String” after
all. The lovers had met and parted.
“April must be told,” she heard Mrs. Stewart saying, “and I don’t know
how the news is to be broken to her.”
It was on the tip of Dorothea’s tongue to say that Mrs. Stewart need not
worry about April’s knowing it; but instead she suggested speaking to
Mrs. May as soon as she returned to the house.
“I think we had better go back as soon as possible,” she ended. “Aunt
Parthenia will know exactly what to do.”
“You have an old head on young shoulders,” Mrs. Stewart said
approvingly. “Call me ‘Aunt Cora,’ dear—though I shan’t be here long. I
knew I should love you the moment I saw you.” On the instant she seemed
to have forgotten April’s affairs and was back again on her own
perplexities. “Do you think I might manage two running bags?” she went
on, looking up with a wrinkled forehead as if the decision was a most
momentous one. “Perhaps two would be too heavy. Still my hoops are good
and wide and I’ve just had them repaired.”
Dorothea gravely advised her about the bags.
“If I go to Brazil,” Mrs. Stewart continued fretfully, “perhaps I’d
better leave my diamonds and take my other jewelry instead. Diamonds are
very common in Brazil, they tell me. Every one has them. They grow them
there, I think; but I’m not sure of that. And then there’s the matter of
the climate. No one seems to know what it’s really like. I wonder if Lee
Hendon could possibly have gone there?”
Dorothea held up a warning finger. She heard the voices of the girls
returning, and Mrs. Stewart, understanding, changed the subject at once
without in the least changing the note of her complaining voice.
“Of course, war is war,” she rambled on; “but what I always said from
the first was that no one had any right to begin it unless they were
sure they could win, and at the least they should have shown enough
foresight to investigate the best places for us to go if we lost. A wise
government would have let us all know whether Brazil or Mexico was the
right place. But no! Nothing of that sort has been done, and the matter
is left to the ladies to settle. However, whichever way I decide, your
father, Corinne, will think we had better go to the other place.”
“I don’t believe Uncle Charlie will want to go away at all,” Harriot
remarked placidly, munching a piece of cake. “I don’t see why he
shouldn’t stay right here the same as before.”
“And do his own work like a common Yankee?” cried Corinne scornfully.
“You forget that all the servants will be gone. I’d rather go to
Brazil.”
“You might pay the servants as we do in England,” Dorothea suggested.
“Papa says it is much cheaper in the end.”
“My dear, how original!” Mrs. Stewart remarked, sewing at top speed.
“Children, I hope you will give heed to your cousin. She has quite a
mind, quite a mind indeed. Of course I don’t see how we can house the
servants and clothe them and feed them and pay them, too; but I’ll
certainly mention it to your Uncle Charles.”
She stopped abruptly to thread her needle and it was as if a river had
suddenly ceased its soothing murmur.
A little later, Harriot having consumed the last piece of cake, the
girls took their departure with promises to see each other soon again.
“What do you think,” Harriot said under her breath, when they were well
away from the house, “Lee Hendon’s mother is dead and he’s run away!”
“Why, how did you know that?” demanded Dorothea, thinking or Mrs.
Stewart’s secrecy in the matter.
“Corinne told me,” Harriot explained. “Aunt Cora doesn’t know and I
didn’t want to tell her, because she’ll blab to everybody she sees,
and—”
“Yes, she told me,” Dorothea said, calmly. “She didn’t want you to know
till I had told Aunt Parthenia.”
“Well!” cried the outraged Harriot. “I like that! As if I couldn’t keep
a secret better than Aunt Cora. At any rate, I don’t see why it should
be made such a mystery. April will be the last person in the town to
find it out. No one will tell her, of course.”
Dorothea turned and looked out across the country through which they
were slowly driving. She was quite sure in her own mind that there would
be no need of any one’s telling April about Lee Hendon.