But they are of working, which is DELIBERATION, interrupted Drummond. They are ashamed to mend their fences themselves, now that they have no slaves to do it for them.
I doubt very much if some of them know how to drive a nail, for the matter of that, said Courtland, still good-humoredly, but thats the fault of a system older than themselves, which the founders of the Republic retained. We cannot give them experience in their new condition in one day, and in fact, Drummond, I am very much afraid that for our purposesand I honestly believe for THEIR goodwe must help to keep them for the present as they are.
Perhaps, said Drummond sarcastically, you would like to reinstate slavery?
No. But I should like to reinstate the MASTER. And not for HIS sake alone, but for freedoms sake and OURS. To be plain: since I have taken up this matter for the company, I have satisfied myself from personal observation that the negroeven more than his mastercannot handle his new condition. He is accustomed to his old traditional task-master, and I doubt if he will work fairly for any otherparticularly for those who dont understand him. Dont mistake me: I dont propose to go back to the whip; to that brutal institution, the irresponsible overseer; to the buying and selling, and separation of the family, nor any of the old wrongs; but I propose to make the old master OUR OVERSEER, and responsible to US. He is not a fool, and has already learned that it is more profitable to pay wages to his old slaves and have the power of dismissal, like any other employer, than be obliged, under the old system of enforced labor and life servitude, to undergo the cost of maintaining incompetence and idleness. The old sentiment of slave-owning has disappeared before natural common-sense and selfishness. I am satisfied that by some such process as this utilizing of the old master and the new freedom we will be better able to cultivate our lands than by buying up their estates, and setting the old owners adrift, with a little money in their pockets, as an idle, discontented class to revive old political dogmas, and foment new issues, or perhaps set up a dangerous opposition to us.
You dont mean to say that those infernal niggers would give the preference to their old oppressors?
Dollar for dollar in wagesyes! And why shouldnt they? Their old masters understand them betterand treat them generally better. They know our interest in them is only an abstract sentiment, not a real liking. We show it at every turn. But we are nearing Redlands, and Major Reed will, I have no doubt, corroborate my impressions. He insists upon our staying at his house, although the poor old fellow, I imagine, can ill afford to entertain company. But he will be offended if we refuse.
He is a friend of yours, then? asked Drummond.
I fought against his division at Stony Creek, said Courtland grimly. He never tires of talking of it to meso I suppose I am.
A few moments later the train glided beside the Redlands platform. As the two travelers descended a hand was laid on Courtlands shoulder, and a stout figure in the blackest and shiniest of alpaca jackets, and the whitest and broadest of Panama hats, welcomed him. Glad to see yo, cunnel. I reckoned Id waltz over and bring along the boy, pointing to a grizzled negro servant of sixty who was bowing before them, to tote yor things over instead of using a hack. I havent run much on horseflesh since the wahha! ha! What I didnt use up for remounts I reckon yor commissary gobbled up with the other live stock, eh? He laughed heartily, as if the recollections were purely humorous, and again clapped Courtland on the back.
Let me introduce my friend, Mr. Drummond, Major Reed, said Courtland, smiling.
Yo were in the wah, sir?
NoIreturned Drummond, hesitating, he knew not why, and angry at his own embarrassment.
Mr. Drummond, the vice-president of the company, interposed Courtland cheerfully, was engaged in furnishing to us the sinews of war.
Major Reed bowed a little more formally. Most of us heah, sir, were in the wah some time or other, and if you gentlemen will honah me by joining in a social glass at the hotel across the way, Ill introduce you to Captain Prendergast, who left a leg at Fair Oaks. Drummond would have declined, but a significant pressure on his arm from Courtland changed his determination. He followed them to the hotel and into the presence of the one-legged warrior (who turned out to be the landlord and barkeeper), to whom Courtland was hilariously introduced by Major Reed as the man, sir, who had pounded my division for three hours at Stony Creek!
Major Reeds house was but a few minutes walk down the dusty lane, and was presently heralded by the baying of three or four foxhounds and foreshadowed by a dilapidated condition of picket-fence and stuccoed gate front. Beyond it stretched the wooden Doric columns of the usual Southern mansion, dimly seen through the broad leaves of the horse-chestnut-trees that shaded it. There were the usual listless black shadows haunting the veranda and outer officesformer slaves and still attached house-servants, arrested like lizards in breathless attitudes at the approach of strange footsteps, and still holding the brush, broom, duster, or home implement they had been lazily using, in their fixed hands. From the doorway of the detached kitchen, connected by a gallery to the wing of the mansion, Aunt Martha, the cook, gazed also, with a saucepan clasped to her bosom, and her revolving hand with the scrubbing cloth in it apparently stopped on a dead centre.
Drummond, whose gorge had risen at these evidences of hopeless incapacity and utter shiftlessness, was not relieved by the presence of Mrs. Reeda soured, disappointed woman of forty, who still carried in her small dark eyes and thin handsome lips something of the bitterness and antagonism of the typical Southern rights woman; nor of her two daughters, Octavia and Augusta, whose languid atrabiliousness seemed a part of the mourning they still wore. The optimistic gallantry and good fellowship of the major appeared the more remarkable by contrast with his cypress-shadowed family and their venomous possibilities. Perhaps there might have been a light vein of Southern insincerity in his good humor. Paw, said Miss Octavia, with gloomy confidence to Courtland, but with a pretty curl of the hereditary lip, is about the only reconstructed one of the entire family. We dont make em much about yer. But Id advise yo friend, Mr. Drummond, if hes coming here carpet-bagging, not to trust too much to paws reconstruction. It wont wash. But when Courtland hastened to assure her that Drummond was not a carpet-bagger, was not only free from any of the political intrigue implied under that baleful title, but was a wealthy Northern capitalist simply seeking investment, the young lady was scarcely more hopeful. I suppose he reckons to pay paw for those niggers yo stole? she suggested with gloomy sarcasm.
No, said Courtland, smiling; but what if he reckoned to pay those niggers for working for your father and him?
If paw is going into trading business with him; if Major Reeda Sothn gentlemanis going to keep shop, he aint such a fool as to believe niggers will work when they aint obliged to. THATS been tried over at Mirandy Dowss, not five miles from here, and the niggers are half the time hangin round here takin holiday. She put up new quarters for em, and tried to make em eat together at a long table like those low-down folks up North, and did away with their cabins and their melon patches, and allowed it would get em out of lying round too much, and wanted em to work over-time and get mo pay. And the result was that she and her niece, and a lot of poor whites, Irish and Scotch, that she had to pick up long the river, do all the work. And her niece Sally was mo than half Union woman during the wah, and up to all Nothn tricks and dodges, and swearin by them; and yet, for all thatthe thing wont work.
But isnt that partly the reason? Isnt her failure a great deal due to this lack of sympathy from her neighbors? Discontent is easily sown, and the negro is still weighted down by superstition; the Fifteenth Amendment did not quite knock off ALL his chains.
Yes, but that is nothing to HER. For if there ever was a person in this world who reckoned she was just born to manage everything and everybody, it is Sally Dows!
Sally Dows! repeated Courtland, with a slight start.
Yes, Sally Dows, of Pineville.
You say she was half Union, but did she have any relations ororfriendsin the waron your side? Anywhowere killed in battle?
They were all killed, I reckon, returned Miss Reed darkly. There was her cousin, Jule Jeffcourt, shot in the cemetery with her beau, who, they say, was Sallys too; there were Chet Brooks and Joyce Masterton, who were both gone on her and both killed too; and there was old Captain Dows himself, who never lifted his head again after Richmond was taken, and drank himself to death. It wasnt considered healthy to be Miss Sallys relations in those times, or to be even wantin to be one.
Colonel Courtland did not reply. The face of the dead young officer coming towards him out of the blue smoke rose as vividly as on that memorable day. The picture and letter he had taken from the dead mans breast, which he had retained ever since; the romantic and fruitless quest he had made for the fair original in after days; and the strange and fateful interest in her which had grown up in his heart since then, he now knew had only been lulled to sleep in the busy preoccupation of the last six months, for it all came back to him with redoubled force. His present mission and its practical object, his honest zeal in its pursuit, and the cautious skill and experience he had brought to it, all seemed to be suddenly displaced by this romantic and unreal fantasy. Oddly enough it appeared now to be the only reality in his life, the rest was an incoherent, purposeless dream.
IsisMiss Sally married? he asked, collecting himself with an effort.
Married? Yes, to that farm of her aunts! I reckon thats the only thing she cares for.
Courtland looked up, recovering his usual cheerful calm. Well, I think that after luncheon Ill pay my respects to her family. From what you have just told me the farm is certainly an experiment worth seeing. I suppose your father will have no objection to give me a letter to Miss Dows?
CHAPTER II
Nevertheless, as Colonel Courtland rode deliberately towards Dows Folly, as the new experiment was locally called, although he had not abated his romantic enthusiasm in the least, he was not sorry that he was able to visit it under a practical pretext. It was rather late now to seek out Miss Sally Dows with the avowed intent of bringing her a letter from an admirer who had been dead three years, and whose memory she had probably buried. Neither was it tactful to recall a sentiment which might have been a weakness of which she was ashamed. Yet, clear-headed and logical as Courtland was in his ordinary affairs, he was nevertheless not entirely free from that peculiar superstition which surrounds every mans romance. He believed there was something more than a mere coincidence in his unexpectedly finding himself in such favorable conditions for making her acquaintance. For the restif there was any resthe would simply trust to fate. And so, believing himself a cool, sagacious reasoner, but being actually, as far as Miss Dows was concerned, as blind, fatuous, and unreasoning as any of her previous admirers, he rode complacently forward until he reached the lane that led to the Dows plantation.
Here a better kept roadway and fence, whose careful repair would have delighted Drummond, seemed to augur well for the new enterprise. Presently, even the old-fashioned local form of the fence, a slanting zigzag, gave way to the more direct line of post and rail in the Northern fashion. Beyond it presently appeared a long low frontage of modern buildings which, to Courtlands surprise, were entirely new in structure and design. There was no reminiscence of the usual Southern porticoed gable or columned veranda. Yet it was not Northern either. The factory-like outline of facade was partly hidden in Cherokee rose and jessamine.
A long roofed gallery connected the buildings and became a veranda to one. A broad, well-rolled gravel drive led from the open gate to the newest building, which seemed to be the office; a smaller path diverged from it to the corner house, which, despite its severe simplicity, had a more residential appearance. Unlike Reeds house, there were no lounging servants or field hands to be seen; they were evidently attending to their respective duties. Dismounting, Courtland tied his horse to a post at the office door and took the smaller path to the corner house.
The door was open to the fragrant afternoon breeze wafted through the rose and jessamine. So also was a side door opening from the hall into a long parlor or sitting-room that ran the whole width of the house. Courtland entered it. It was prettily furnished, but everything had the air of freshness and of being uncharacteristically new. It was empty, but a faint hammering was audible on the rear wall of the house, through the two open French windows at the back, curtained with trailing vines, which gave upon a sunlit courtyard. Courtland walked to the window. Just before it, on the ground, stood a small light ladder, which he gently put aside to gain a better view of the courtyard as he put on his hat, and stepped out of the open window.
In this attitude he suddenly felt his hat tipped from his head, followed almost instantaneously by a falling slipper, and the distinct impression of a very small foot on the crown of his head. An indescribable sensation passed over him. He hurriedly stepped back into the room, just as a small striped-stockinged foot was as hastily drawn up above the top of the window with the feminine exclamation, Good gracious me!
Lingering for an instant, only to assure himself that the fair speaker had secured her foothold and was in no danger of falling, Courtland snatched up his hat, which had providentially fallen inside the room, and retreated ingloriously to the other end of the parlor. The voice came again from the window, and struck him as being very sweet and clear:
Sophy, is that YOU?
Courtland discreetly retired to the hall. To his great relief a voice from the outside answered, Whar, Miss Sally?
What did yo move the ladder for? Yo might have killed me.
Fo God, Miss Sally, I didnt move no ladder!
Dont tell me, but go down and get my slipper. And bring up some more nails.
Courtland waited silently in the hall. In a few moments he heard a heavy footstep outside the rear window. This was his opportunity. Re-entering the parlor somewhat ostentatiously, he confronted a tall negro girl who was passing through the room carrying a tiny slipper in her hand. Excuse me, he said politely, but I could not find any one to announce me. Is Miss Dows at home?
The girl instantly whipped the slipper behind her. Is yo wanting Miss Mirandy Dows, she asked with great dignity, oah Miss Sally Dowsher niece? Miss Mirandys bin gone to Atlanta for a week.
I have a letter for Miss Miranda, but I shall be very glad if Miss Sally Dows will receive me, returned Courtland, handing the letter and his card to the girl.
She received it with a still greater access of dignity and marked deliberation. Its clean gone outer my mind, sah, ef Miss Sally is in de resumption of visitahs at dis houah. In fac, sah, she continued, with intensified gravity and an exaggeration of thoughtfulness as the sounds of Miss Sallys hammering came shamelessly from the wall, I doahn know exacly ef shes engaged playin de harp, practicin de languages, or paintin in oil and watah colors, o givin audiences to offishals from de Court House. It might be de houah for de one or de odder. But Ill communicate wid her, sah, in de budwoh on de uppah flo. She backed dexterously, so as to keep the slipper behind her, but with no diminution of dignity, out of a side door. In another moment the hammering ceased, followed by the sound of rapid whispering without; a few tiny twigs and leaves slowly rustled to the ground, and then there was complete silence. He ventured to walk to the fateful window again.