“It’s a girl,” said Roden, laying a wager with himself. “No; it’s a
boy. Hanged if it isn’t a girl!” He took his short brier-wood pipe from
his mouth, knocked out its contents against the side of the wagon, and
pocketed it.
The time of the year was January, the scene a country road in Virginia,
and it was drizzling, a thick Scotch drizzle, abetted by a lusty east
wind. Even the branches of the straggling locust-trees that lined the
red road seemed clogged with it. It hung in folds upon the sides of the
mountains, and was blown in masses between the clefts of the rolling
meadows.
Roden was not only a new arrival in Virginia, but in America, and
the impression made upon him had not, to speak very moderately, been
favorable. Coming from Washington, some one in the train had asked him
if it did not remind him of England. He had answered with some curtness
that it did not, demanding at the same time why he should be particularly
reminded of England by the state of the weather in Virginia. His
interlocutor had replied with the never-failing urbanity of the Virginian
farmer, that “anybody could tell he was an Englisher by th’ way he
talked, and them loose pants.”
At the moment he first saw the figure alluded to, the owner of the
British accent and the “loose pants” was shivering in spite of the
top-coat turned up about his ears and the soft hat pulled down to meet it.
It was indeed a girl; she wore a soft hat, the counterpart of his own,
fashioned of the same stuff as her dark-gray jacket and the kirtle
which reached just below her knees. On her legs were shooting-gaiters of
russet leather, decidedly influenced as to color by the tyrannic soil,
and on her feet stout cowhide boots. She carried a gun on her shoulder,
and a game-bag hung at her side. She further appeared to be bounded
on the east, west, north, and south by dogs. An old mastiff lounged
sulkily at her heels. Far in front, a collie gave chase to a stately
buzzard, which sailed away undisturbed by its pursuer’s shrill barking,
while an asthmatic pug sought a Juggernautal fate between the ponderous
wagon-wheels, and a little black-and-tan terrier, sniffing hither and
thither among the mist-drenched weeds, reminded Roden of the accounts of
certain mammoth ants as related by the credulous Herodotus.
The girl, who had been walking with head bent, looked up as the creaking
of the wagon-wheels arrested her attention.
“I beg your pardon,” said Roden, “but can you tell me if I am on the
right road to Caryston Hall? I think that’s the name.”
She looked at him seriously for a moment, and then said, “Yes, you are. I
s’pose you’re th’ new Englishman. Are you?”
“I suppose so,” said Roden. “My name is Roden. I have bought a farm
somewhere in this neighborhood, and it is called Caryston Hall.”
“That’s it,” she said; “you’re right. My father’s th’ overseer there. Why
don’t you get down and walk? You look so cold. I’ll show you.”
“Thank you,” said Roden; “I think I will;” and he jumped down beside her.
Judging by her attire, he had at first thought her a sporting
country-woman of his own, like himself an exile in a far country; but
after she had spoken he found that the soft, slow intonation was strange
to his ear. “The overseer business explains it,” he thought. “She is a
native, and this language is Virginian.” In the mean time the girl was
also making mental observations. He was the third English gentleman she
had seen, though of immigrant Britishers she had known full threescore
and ten. She was thinking that he had spoken to her with an unusual
civility, and wondering how long it would continue. Civility this young
Virginian had not found to be a characteristic of the British settler in
her native State.
“I’m very lucky to have met you,” said Roden, as they walked on, having
dismissed the services of the ancient wagoner, whom the girl addressed as
“Unc’ Dick.” “I would like to ask you some questions about the place, and
it’s awfully kind of you to go back with me.”
She said, indifferently, and without lifting her eyes this time, “Oh, I
was goin’ back anyway! ’Tisn’t any bother.”
Her long strides matched Roden’s exactly, and the rapid motion through
the stiffly yielding medium under foot began to warm his veins. They saw
the serpentine flourish of Unc’ Dick’s voluminous whip-lash outlined
against the pale sky as the wagon descended a hill just in front of them.
Two more buzzards appeared, slanting in still absorption towards the
west. Instantly the collie was after them.
“Why didn’t you telegraph?” said the girl, suddenly.
“I did,” said Roden, with some grimness. “I telegraphed twice. I also had
the pleasure of rereading both telegrams when I arrived at the station
about an hour ago.”
“Seems to me,” she said, turning to look over her shoulder at the
mastiff, pug, and terrier, that were having a tow-row over an old
shoe (which same seem to be sown in lieu of corn in the thorns by the
Virginian way-side)--“Seems to me that letters reach us twice as quick
as telegrams, anyhow. You must have thought it funny we didn’t send for
you?”
“I don’t know that I found it very amusing,” said Roden, truthfully,
adding, in a tone of helpless aggravation, “All my luggage was left
behind in Washington.”
At this direct appeal the overseer’s daughter at first looked as
sorrowful as even Roden could have desired, bursting the next moment into
peals and roulades of laughter. Roden, after the first sharp inclination
to feel angry, joined in her mirth.
“Pore feller!” she said at last, taking off her rain-soaked hat, on which
she appeared to dry her brimming eyes--“Pore feller! it all seems awful
to you out here, don’t it?”
“It does,” said Roden in his heart, but out loud he replied with
mendacious civility that it did not. He was, moreover, occupied in a
close scrutiny of her uncovered locks. They were of a pale golden color,
lying close to her forehead in thick, round rings, after the manner of
a child’s, and clustering heavily, with the dampness. As he stood beside
her he saw also that she was very tall, taller than most tall women,
and that her fair throat, rising boy-like from a dark-red kerchief, had
unusual suggestions of muscle beneath its smooth surface.
Presently they walked on. The top of a tolerably high hill was soon
reached, surmounted, as Roden at first thought, by an almost impenetrable
thicket. As they approached nearer, however, he perceived an aperture
in the mass of foliage, and a long wooden gate, hanging by one hinge in
an aimless, desultory manner, and ornamented also as to its dingy gray
with copious splashes of red mud. On either post were rusty iron vases,
wherefrom there sprouted two stunted specimens of the aloe tribe. One
of these vases, having been broken some years before, hung over to one
side with a suggestion of inanimate sentimentality highly ludicrous. Some
kind Samaritan had thrust a stick in between its disabled joints, thus
preventing it from utter downfall.
The view beyond the gate was unique, and to Roden rather pleasant after
his morning’s experience. The lawn proper was shaped like a lady’s
slipper, and outlined by a gravel carriage-drive. It seemed as though
some Titaness might have set a careless foot among the surrounding
shrubbery, crushing out of existence all save a bordering fringe of
evergreen and acacias. The long, low house of red brick--with wings
out-spread after a protective, hen-like fashion in the direction of the
many out-houses--was to be seen through the bare branches of two splendid
tulip-trees. A little Alderney heifer was grazing near the portico, and
some dorkings stood resignedly on long yellow legs under the shelter of
the large box-bushes.
As they worked along the sinuous carriage-way Roden looked with a feeling
of ownership at the glimpses of distant hill and forest, as visible
through the crowding tree-stems. Here he was to make his home for at
least the next two years, and he was glad not to find it so bad as he had
expected.
As she opened the hall door the girl said to him, “Father won’t be here
until six o’clock. I’ll have you some dinner ef you want it. But you’d
better go to your room first, hadn’t you, you’re so wet?--I’ll send you
some things the larst Englishman left behind him. There’s a barth ready,
and plenty of towels. I’m used to fixin’ for you English, you see. Well,
good-by till you’re dressed; then I’ll show you over the house.”
[Illustration: “I CAN’T COME TO DINNER.”]
She sent a little “nigger,” who conducted him with wordless dignity to
the apartment allotted him, and who some five minutes later returned
again with the “last Englishman’s things.” That personage must have been
of very slight proportions and medium height, whereas Roden stood six
foot one in his stockings, and was of excellent figure. He struggled for
some time with the meagre garments, and then decided that he could not
put in an appearance until his own garments should be dry. At this moment
some one knocked at the door with the announcement--“Dinner rade-y.”
“I can’t come to dinner,” said Roden at the key-hole. “The clothes won’t
fit me. Say I am very sorry.”
The departing footsteps echoed down the narrow corridor that led to the
room which had been given him, and Roden, who had taken the silk coverlet
from the bed and rolled himself in it, stretched out before the fire of
pine cones in the big fireplace. The room was large and square, and had
hangings of faded green silk embroidered with tarnished gold. A ponderous
mahogany wardrobe, looking like nothing so much as a grim wooden
mausoleum, occupied nearly all of one wall. Facing this on the opposite
side of the room was a low chest of drawers, also of mahogany, with brass
lion-head handles. A square mirror in a wrought-brass frame hung over
it. The bedstead was low and wide, with foot-board and head-board of a
like height. Voluminous curtains of faded green fell from a mahogany
frame fastened to the ceiling, and were tucked back behind brass knobs
on either side of the bed. There was a huge pale-green paper screen
crowded into one corner of the room, and behind this Roden discovered a
bath-tub and a washhand-stand. One picture hung over the mantle-shelf, a
reproduction of the Madonna of the Chair, done evidently with a very hard
and very pointed lead-pencil, and faintly tinted with pink chalk as to
lips and cheeks.
Roden lay in the soft embrace of his one Indian-like garment and stared
up at this work of art. He became fascinated in wondering how many days
it must have taken its indefatigable perpetrator to make the million of
little scratches that composed it. He wondered if it were the production
of generations past or present. Could Virginia herself have been guilty
of it? He thought not. At all events he hoped not. Her voice seemed
to put her beyond the pale of such possibilities. He recalled it to
his memory’s ear now, with a distinct sensation of pleasure. There had
been in it a certain rich sonorousness. It was grave, serious, soft
as the rush of the rain through the short grass without. A beautiful
voice attracts men always, even as the _timbre_ of a fine instrument
invariably attracts a musician. It is, so to speak, the overture to the
whole character. No; the pink-cheeked Virgin, with the slate-colored
infant tilted against her wooden and unresponsive bosom, could never
have been the work of the maiden in the Rosalind costume. Never, never!
Why, now that he thought of it, should the cheeks of the pictured
Madonna so blush? unless, perhaps, at the culpable drawing of her sacred
proportions. Why should she have been drawn at all? There was absolutely
no reason that he could discover. The pine cones crackled and blazed up
with a savory smell. The fragrant warmth stole pleasantly over the young
fellow’s relaxed limbs. The pink-and-gray Madonna faded slowly and surely
away in a golden haze. There was a pleasant humming as of a summer field
within his ears. Why did he seem to be pulling up a scarlet window-blind,
which obstinately refused to remain in position, in order to let three
large black sheep gambol at their pleasure about that imposing mahogany
catafalque? And why did the loss of a brass key at least three feet
long, and which seemed to belong to his hat-box, occasion him such acute
mortification when called upon by a very old woman in blue kid low-shoes
to explain its whereabouts? And why did--and why didn’t--and what on
earth made them all? Roden had not slept so soundly since leaving British
soil.
He was awakened by a vigorous rapping at the door. He sat up and rolled
himself more tightly in the big green silk quilt.
“Who is it?” he said.
“’Tis yo’ clo’es,” replied a solemn voice. “An’ please, sur, ter dress ez
quick ez you kin, ’case supper soon be rade-y.”
Roden admitted his once more dry outfit through a small aperture in the
door, after having inquired as to the time, and finding that he had slept
two hours.
“Miss Faginia she say ez how she ben think you’d rayther eat yo’
supper jiss so, ’thout sp’ilin’ it with er sorter dinner,” chanted the
monotonous voice without.
Roden admitted that “Miss Faginia” had been quite right in her
conjecture. In half an hour he went out into the big hall, which, divided
by three arches, ran through the centre of the house. Over the first was
a fine moose-head. There were skins of many beasts here and there on the
slippery oak floor, and straight-backed chairs set against the panelled
wall, which some barbarian had painted white. A much-carved oak table on
one side supported a large silver flagon and two old-fashioned tankards.
On the other was an old-fashioned hat-rack, filled mostly with feminine
head-gear of various makes and sizes. A pair of branchy antlers supported
riding-canes of all descriptions.
Guided by the sounds of a piano softly played, Roden opened a door on
his left, and found himself in a large firelit room, whose walls were
absolutely covered with pictures large and small, all in old Italian
frames, all more or less stiff and ill painted, all hung, regardless of
size or shape, as close to one another as they could possibly be placed.
The effect of the thus concentrated colors was, in spite of the defects
of the pictures themselves, quaint and jewel-like. Over the mantle of
carved oak reached upward to the ceiling an enormous square mirror in the
style of the First Empire. On one side of the room was hung its mate,
also in lonely grandeur, and facing the portrait of a very rosy dame in a
still rosier tulle dress, the whole suggesting in color the presence of
the all-pervading Virginian soil.
Just under this second mirror was a piano, and at this piano was standing
the overseer’s daughter, striking idle chords with her left hand.
She had taken off her Rosalind costume, and appeared in a blue homespun
dress, neat and scant of make, and with her two big braids hanging over
her shoulders.
“Oh, it’s you!” she said, addressing Roden. “I was just trying th’ piano
to see ’f any ’v the keys’d stuck since the last Englishman left; but th’
haven’t. D’you like music?” she went on, in her vibrant voice, which
seemed in some strange manner to harmonize with the firelight and the now
steady hum of the rain without. “I’ll tell you, before you say anything,
I can play very well.”
Roden found her open conceit a very novel and amusing sensation, but when
she had struck a few chords firmly, her long fingers sinking in among the
keys as might the fingers of a miser among the gold coin that he loved,
he thought no more of anything save the melody that filled the room.
“Gad!” said he, when she had ceased, “I should say you could play,
rather! Where on earth--who taught you?”
“No one,” she said, absently, striking noiseless chords with her left
hand, and not looking at him. “I’ve heard people, and I do’t by ear.
And the men that’ve had th’ Hall’ve been awful kind ’bout lettin’ me
play--an’ that’s all,” comprehensively--adding, with sudden irrelevance,
“Were your clothes quite dry?”
“Quite,” he assured her; “but they are beastly dirty to come to supper
in.”
“I dried them myself,” she continued, taking no notice of his last
assertion. “Such work as I had, too! I really think if Milly hadn’t
helped me, you’d ’a’ been in--in--in your green silk quilt now.”
She leaned forward for some moments, laughing, with her head against the
music-rack, so that the piano reverberated shrilly with the clear sound.
Roden laughed with her.
“Who told you--the little nigger?” he asked. “And who is Milly?”
She got suddenly to her feet, as suddenly becoming grave, and closed the
piano.
“Milly’s one o’ th’ darkies,” she said. “Come and get your supper.”
He followed her across the wide hall into the dining-room, and found that
supper at Caryston Hall was a very pretty meal. It was served on finest
but much-darned damask, by the light of six tall candles in silver
candlesticks, each ornamented by a little petticoat of scarlet silk,
which gave them the appearance of diminutive coryphées pirouetting on one
slender wax leg. A bowl of violets and primroses occupied the centre of
the table, flanked on either side by crystal dishes, filled, the one with
the pale amber of honey, the other with the deep crimson of cranberries.
The overseer’s daughter poured out tea behind a great silver urn, while
on her right hand a monstrous cut-glass flagon foamed with richest milk.
“Positively artistic,” thought Roden, feeling a certain respect in his
British breast for this little maiden of Virginia who could evolve out
of her own country-bred brain effects so charming. “It’s a beastly
pity!” he told himself, though in what the pity consisted he could not
quite have told any one else, unless perhaps that a being so gifted with
a talent for instrumental music, and the setting forth of appetizing
supper-tables, should be hemmed in from further progress by the scarlet
soil of her native State, and should murder his sovereign’s language with
ruthless regularity by beheading some words and cutting the remainder in
two.
He also pondered somewhat as to the way in which Virginian overseers and
their children expected to be treated by resident foreigners. He noticed
that the girl ate nothing herself, sitting with her hand in her lap after
she had poured out his cup of tea, and pulling idly at the frayed edge of
the table-cloth, with eyes downcast. He wished very much that he knew how
to address her, and was casting about in his mind as to how he might find
out her surname without being rude, when she answered him directly.
“My name is Virginia”--she said “Faginia”--but it came softly to the
ear--“Virginia Herrick.”
“They ought to have called you ‘Julia,’ Miss Herrick,” said the young
Englishman, gravely regarding her grave face.
“Why?” she said, with her swift change from listless to alert--“why ought
they? It’s a hijeous name, I think.”
“It isn’t very pretty--not near so pretty as ‘Faginia,’” said Roden,
gallantly; “but there was a fellow once called Herrick who was always
writing songs to ‘Julia.’”
“Oh,” said the girl, with a sudden dawning in her sombre eyes, “that’s
the man wrote ‘To Daffodils’ and ‘Primroses’ and things, ain’t it?”
“That’s the man,” he said.
“Well,” she replied, slowly, “I don’t see why I ought to be called Julia.
Her last name wa’n’t Herrick, ’cause he wouldn’t ’a’ written those kynder
things to his sister, and a man wouldn’t ’a’ taken th’ trouble to write
songs to’s wife.”
“Why?” said Roden, fixing on her his eyes, at whose blueness she began to
wonder in a vague way. Thus looking out from the young man’s sunburnt,
weather-marked face they reminded her of some vivid, sky-colored flower
springing into sudden azure among brown summer grasses.
“Why?” he repeated. “Are all Virginian husbands so ungallant to their
wives?”
“So what?” she said, contracting her level brows.
“So rude, so careless of their wives.”
“Oh, I reckon so,” she made answer. “I don’t know much ’bout men ’n’
their wives. My father’s died when I was born, an’ somehow I don’t take
much to women, nor they tuh me. But I know ’nuff,” she supplemented, “to
know a man ain’t goin’ to make a fuss over ’s wife.”
“If you ever marry,” said Roden, “do you think you will put up with that
sort of thing?”
“Sho!” she exclaimed, rising and pushing back her chair, which made a
sharp sound on the polished oak of the floor. “I’ll never marry in _this_
world.”
“Well, you certainly won’t in the next,” said Roden, smiling broadly;
“that is, if you’re orthodox.”
“What o’dox?” she said, pausing to question him, with one hand on the
table.
“Orthodox--if you believe all that the Bible tells you.”
“Well, I don’t,” she said, quickly; “not by a long sight. I don’t believe
all those things got into one place like that ark without killin’ each
other clean out. An’ I don’t believe those b’ars eat them children for
laughin’ at that ole feller’s bal’ head (I’ve laughed at many of ’em
myself, an’ no b’ars ’ain’t ever eat me; an’ if ’twas right then, ’twould
be right now). No, I cert’n’y ain’t or-or-orth’dox,” said Miss Virginia
Herrick, beginning to clear away the supper-dishes.
“You’re not commonplace, at all events,” Roden told himself, as, after
having obtained her permission to smoke, he lighted a cigarette.
It was now past eight o’clock, and still no signs of the recreant
overseer. Roden occupied himself with putting many questions of a
more business-like character to Miss Herrick, as she moved about the
room restoring things to their proper places. He found that the little
petticoats which ornamented the candles were some more of the things left
by “the last Englishman;” and that the primroses and violets grew in what
was called the “greenhouse,” a narrow glass-fronted corridor reaching
along the front of the east wing of the house, and opening out of the
dining-room.
He said he would like to go in to look at it, and she at once conducted
him there, carrying no candle, since a full-moon looked in at them
through the lattice of the winter trees. A thick soft air, spongy with
dampness, closed about them. The flowers rose dark and redolent on all
sides. Roden could make out the large, bunchily growing leaves of a
magnolia-tree outside, seen in rich relief against the dim sky.
Roden, who had an artistic soul, found much pleasure in watching her. He
was beginning to think that in her own unique way she was beautiful, and
she was certainly shaped like a young caryatid.
After she had answered various queries about house and out-house, niggers
and stables, they returned to the dining-room, and lifting one of the
tall candlesticks from a side-table, she opened one of the many doors.
“I’m going to father’s room,” she announced; “’f you like you can come
too. Most of ’em” (alluding probably to the preceding Englishmen)--“most
of ’em liked to smoke there. I’ve got my spinnin’ an’ some things to do.
Ef you want to stay here, there’s books.” She made a comprehensive sweep
with her candleless hand in the direction of a low bookcase which ran
around three sides of the room.
“I think I’ll come with you, if you really don’t mind,” said Roden.
“Lor’, no!” she hastened to assure him. “But ’f you don’t like dogs an’
’coons an’ things, you’d better not.”
“Oh, I don’t mind ’coons and--and things,” said Roden, somewhat vaguely.
“I’ll come, thank you.”
They went down a long hall, descended a little stair-way whereon the
moonlight fell bluely through a square window high above, down more
steps, along another passage with sharp turns, and in at an already open
door. An old negress, vividly turbaned, was heaping wood upon an already
immense fire.
“Lor’, mammy!” called Miss Herrick, “for mercy’s sakes stop! ’F you put
any more wood on that fire you’ll have to get up on th’ roof an’ shove ’t
down th’ chimney.” The “’coons and things” were already crowding about
them.
Roden recognized several of his canine friends of the morning, and
there were, moreover, two splendid old hounds, which at sight of their
evidently beloved “Faginia” set up a most booming yowl of welcome.
There were also the ’coon; a curious flat-stomached little beast, that
flew about after a startling fashion from chair to chair, and which Miss
Herrick introduced as a “chipmunk;” a corn-crake; a young screech-owl;
and three large Persian cats.
All these pets, he discovered later, had been presented from time to time
by the “last Englishman,” or “the Englishman before the last,” or “the
Englishman before the one with the glass eye,” or the fat wife, or the
ugly sister, or what not.
“If I can only add a gorilla or a condor to this unique collection,”
reflected Roden, “my position is assured. I will probably be forever the
‘last Englishman,’ and I will always be mentioned as ‘the Englishman who
gave me the gorilla.’”
He then sat down in a corner as far removed as was consistent with
politeness from the other inhabitants of the apartment, and occupied
himself with watching “Faginia,” her “mammy,” and the “things.”
“Aunt Tishy,” said Miss Herrick, indicating him with a movement of her
bright head, as he sat withdrawn into his coign of vantage, like a
hermit-crab within its shell, “that’s the new Englishman, Mr. Roden.”
“How yo’ do, sur? Hope yo’ coporosity segastuate fus rate, sur,” quoth
the dusky dame, with an elephantine dab, supposed in the innocence of her
Virginian heart to correspond to the courtesy of civilization.
“My what?” said Roden.
“She means she hopes you are well,” explained Virginia, about whose neck
the raccoon was coiling himself with serpentine affection.
“Oh yes, thanks, very well. Are you?” said Roden.
“Gord! yes, sur; Tishy she _al’uz_ well--ain’ she, honey?” This last
appeal to Virginia.
“Oh yes,” said that young woman “’cep’ when you get th’ misery, or th’
year-ache in th’ middle o’ th’ coldest nights, an’ have me huntin’ all
over creation for somethin’ to put in your year. Oh yes!”
“G’way, chile!” exclaimed the thus maligned personage, with an air of
indignant sufferance. “If I didn’ know yer wuz jess projeckin’, I sutny
would feel bade.”
“Oh no, you wouldn’t,” said her mistress, easily. “_This_ one,” again
indicating Roden, “’s goin’ in fur horse-racin’. Some of his horses’s
comin’ day after to-morrer. That’s better’n Herefordshire cattle, ain’t
it?”
“Co’se _you_ think so,” said Aunt Tishy, with something between a sniff
and a grunt, as she settled herself in the chimney-corner with a basket
of darning, and fell to work, stretching the stockings to be mended over
a little gourd.
“Why, Aunt Tishy?” said Roden, beginning to feel as though he were a
character in a book, and might spoil the plot by saying the wrong thing.
The old negress looked up at him over her big gold-rimmed spectacles,
with her great underlip pushed out, showing its pale yellowish lining.
“Lor’! sur,” she said, “Miss Faginny’s plum crazy ’bout horses. Ev’ybody
on de place’ll tell you dat. I alwuz hol’s as how somebody done cunjur
her mar ’fo’ she was bown. Dat’s why she so run made ’bout horses.
Somebody sutny _is_ cunjur Miss Faginny. I’ll say dat with my last bref!”
“Oh, shut up, mammy!” here interpolated Virginia.
“I sutny will,” reiterated the old black.
“Cert’n’y will what?” said Miss Herrick; “shut up? I’m sure I hope so,
and I know Mr. Roden does.”
She rose and put down the raccoon, who immediately clambered up to the
carven top of an old oak press close by, and hung there, smiling genially.
Virginia busied herself in getting out her spinning-wheel and winding
the distaff with blue wool. As she sat down to her spinning, with her
closely plaited fair hair falling into her lap, a novel thought suggested
itself to Roden, namely, that this blond maiden might be a Desdemona
dressed up as Marguerite, with the Moor concealed as her nurse.
He watched with a strange sensation of unreality the whirring wooden
wheel, the soft falling of the blue thread upon the floor, the dusky
smoke-stained rafters of the room, wherefrom hung strings of onions and
red peppers in gay festoons; the old negress, wrinkled as to her black
face with busy absorption; the moving of the different creatures in
the sombre depths of shadow. Now it was the glint of the corn-crake’s
flame-like crest as he thrust an inquisitive head from his position on a
shelf over the mantle. Now the white gleam of the raccoon’s sharp teeth
as he grinned with an amiable persistency upon the room and its inmates.
Now the old hounds grumbled uneasily in their sleep, or the Persian cats
leaned against his legs with luxurious, undulating appeals to be caressed.
“Why don’ yo’ sing, honey?” said Aunt Tishy; “yo’ know yo’ kyarn’ harf
wuk ef yo’ don’ sing.”
“Yes, do sing, Miss Virginia,” said Roden. “A nig--I mean a darky song,”
he added, quickly.
“What shall I sing, mammy?” questioned she.
“Dat ’pen’s on whut kinder song de gen’leman wants.”
“Well, what kind do you want?” she asked him.
“Something characteristic,” he replied.
Thus adjured, she sang to him, in a very rich contralto voice, the
following ditty:
“Ole ark she reel, ole ark she rock,
Settin’ up on de mountain-top.
Ole ark a-movin’, movin’ chillun--
Ole ark a-movin, I thank Gord!
“Ole hyah, whut make yo’ eye so pop?
I thank Gord fuh tuh see how tuh hop!
Ole ark a-movin’, movin’, chillun--
Ole ark a-movin’, I thank Gord!
“Ole hyah, whut make yo’ legs so thin?
I thank Gord fuh tuh split ’gin de win’!
Ole ark a-movin’, movin’, chillun--
Ole ark a-movin’, I thank Gord!
“Ole hyah, whut make yo’ hade so bal’?
I thank Gord ben butt ’gin de wall!
Ole ark a-movin’, movin’, chillun--
Ole ark a-movin’, I thank Gord!”
Before Roden could say anything, she rose and put aside her
spinning-wheel, holding out to him her long shapely hand, which was
covered with tan as with a brown glove to within about an inch of her
homespun sleeve. “Good-night,” she said; “I’m sleepy. Father won’t be
here now till tuh-morrer. I s’pec’ he slept at Cyarver’s. Everything’s
ready--your barth an’ everything.”
Thus dismissed, Roden took himself off to bed. As he dropped to sleep
to the tune of “Ole ark a-movin’,” he was conscious of uncomfortable
memories concerning haunted rooms in old Virginian mansions. Not that
he believed in ghosts--Heaven forbid!--but some one might--some little
nigger, you know--might play one a trick.
He was roused suddenly and unpleasantly by three solemn raps on the door
at his bed’s head.
“Well--what is it?” he said, in an unnecessarily loud tone.
“’Tis me--Aun’ Tishy,” replied an unmistakable voice. “Please come to de
do’, sur, jess a minute.”
He answered this appeal, opening the door cautiously an inch or two,
whereupon she thrust into his hands a little white bundle.
“Dis heah’s fo’ yo’ to war tuh-night. Marse Gawge he don’ war no
night-shuts, and dey am none o’ th’ other Englishers lef’ none; so I
jess stole you one o’ Miss Faginny’s. Don’ say nothin’ ’bout it, please,
sur, ’case ef dar _is_ one thing Miss Faginny’s ’tic’lar ’bout, ’tis her
clo’es.”
Roden took the long white garment gingerly, as men lift a young baby,
bade Aunt Tishy good-night, and closed the door. He then went to the fire
and began to examine what that colossal personage had inferred to be
“Miss Faginny’s night-shut.”
It was a capacious arrangement of very thin linen, and superfine little
frills of a like material--hardly the garment in which an overseer’s
daughter would have wooed repose. The young man looked at it carefully
and gravely from all points of view, then went and hung it over the
mirror, and returning to bed, regarded it with the mute attention which
he had before bestowed on the drab-colored Madonna. It was a dainty
thing, probably a relic of some previous Englishman’s wife or daughter,
and the rosy light from the handful of fresh cones which he had thrown
on the fire stole in and out of its sheer folds caressingly.
He left it hanging there, and the last thing he remembered that night was
its gleam, as of a pretty ghost in the firelit dusk of the big room.