Kitabı oku: «Ruth Fielding Down in Dixie; Great Times in the Land of Cotton», sayfa 4
CHAPTER VII – MISS CATALPA
“Oh! the poor dear!” gasped Helen, for she, like Ruth, discovered the little lady’s infirmity almost at once.
The old negro coachman pompously strode down the porch, beckoning to the girls to follow. They were, for the moment, embarrassed. It seemed impudent to approach this strange gentlewoman with no introduction save that of the disreputable looking Unc’ Simmy.
But the quick, sudden shower lulled a little and they could hear the lady’s voice – a sweet, delicious, drawling tone. She said:
“Yo’ have brought some callers, I see, Simmy. Good afternoon, young ladies.”
Her use of the word “see” brought the quick, stinging tears to Ruth Fielding’s eyes. But the lady’s smile and outstretched hand welcomed both girls to her end of the porch. The hand was frail and beautiful. It surely had never done any work more arduous than the knitting in the lady’s lap.
She was dressed very plainly in gingham; but every flaunce was starched and ironed beautifully, and the lace in the low-cut neck of the cheap gown and at the wrists, was valuable and ivory-hued with age.
The negro cleared his voice and said, with great respect, removing his ancient hat as he did so:
“De young ladies done tak’ refuge yere wid’ yo’ w’ile it shower so hard, Miss Catalpa. I tell ’em yo’ don’t mind dem comin’ in t’ res’. Yo’ knows Unc’ Simmy dribes de quality eround de P’int nowadays.”
“Oh, yes, Simmy. I know,” said Miss Catalpa, with a little sigh. “It isn’t as it used to be befo’ we had to take refuge, too, in this old gatehouse. It is a refuge both in sun and rain fo’ us. How do you do, my dears? I know you are young ladies – and I love the young. And I fancy you are from the No’th, too?”
And Helen and Ruth had not yet said a word! The subtle appreciation of the blind woman told her much that astonished the girls.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Ruth, striving to keep her voice from shaking, for the pity she felt for the lady gripped her at the throat. “We are two schoolgirls who have come down to Dixie to play for a few weeks after our graduation from Briarwood Hall.”
“Indeed? I went to school fo’ a while at Miss Chamberlain’s in Washington. Hers was a very select young ladies’ school. But, re’lly, you know, had my po’ eyes not been too weak to study, the family exchequer could scarcely stand the drain,” and she laughed, low and sweetly. “The Grogan fortunes had long been on the wane, you see. No men to build them up again. The war took everything from us; but the heaviest blow of all was the killin’ of our men.”
“It must have been terrible,” said Ruth, “to lose one’s brothers and fathers and cousins by bullet and sword.”
“Yes, indeed!” sighed the lady. “Not that I can remembah it, child! No more than you can. I’m not so old as all that,” and she laughed merrily. “The Grogan plantation was gone, of course, long before I saw the light. But my father was a broken man, disabled by the campaigns he went through.”
“Isn’t it terrible?” whispered Helen to her chum, for it sounded to the unsophisticated girl like a tale of recent happenings.
Miss Catalpa smiled, turning her sightless eyes up to them. “There’s only Unc’ Simmy and I left now. My lawyer, Kunnel Wildah, tells me there is barely enough left to keep us in this po’ place till I’m called to my long rest,” said the lady devoutly.
“But my wants are few. Uncle Simmy does for me most beautifully. He is the last of the family servants – bo’n himself on the old plantation. This was the gateway to the Grogan Place – and it was a mile from the house,” and she laughed again – pleasantly, sweetly, and as carefree in sound as a bird’s note. “The limits of the estate have shrunk, you see.”
“It must be dreadful to have been rich, and then fall into poverty,” Helen said, commiseratingly.
“Why, honey,” said Miss Catalpa, cheerfully, “nothin’ is dreadful in this wo’ld if we look at it right. All trials are sent for our blessin’, if we take them right. Even my blindness,” she added simply. “It must have been for my good that I was deprived of the boon of sight ten years ago – just when almost the last bit of money left to me seemed to have been lost. And I expect if I hadn’t foolishly cried so much over the failure of the Needles Bank where the money was, and which seemed to be a total wreck, I would not have been totally blind. So the doctors tell me.”
“Dear, dear!” murmured Helen, wiping her own eyes.
“But then, you see, there was enough saved from the wreckage after all to keep me alive,” and Miss Catalpa smiled again. “All that troubles me is what will become of Uncle Simmy when I am gone. He insists on ‘dribin de quality’, as he calls it, and so earns a little something for himself. That livery he wears is the old Grogan livery. I expect it is a good deal faded by now,” she laughed, adding: “Our old barouche, too! He insists on taking me out in it every pleasant Sunday. I can feel that the cushions are ragged and that the wheels wobble. Po’ Uncle Simmy! Ah! here he is. Surely, Simmy, the rain hasn’t stopped?”
“No’m, Miss Catalpa,” said the old negro, appearing and bowing again. “But mebbe ‘twon’t stop soon, an’ deseyer young ladies want t’ git back fo’ luncheon at de hotel. I done fix’ dat hood, misses. ‘Twell keep yo’ dry.”
Ruth took the lady’s hand again. “I am glad to have met you,” she said, her voice quite firm now. “If we stay long enough at the Point, may we come and see you again?”
“Sho’ly! Sho’ly, my dear,” she said, drawing Ruth down to kiss her cheek. “I love to have you young people about me. Take good care of them, Uncle Simmy.”
“Ya-as’m, Miss Catalpa – Ah sho’ will.”
She kissed Helen, too, and possibly felt the tears on the girl’s cheek. She patted the hand she held and whispered: “Don’t weep for me, my dear. I am going to a better and a brighter world some day, I know. I am not through with this one yet – and I love it. There is nothing to weep for.”
“And if I were she I’d not only cry my eyes blind, but I’d cry them out!” whispered Helen to Ruth, as they followed the old coachman.
When they were out of ear-shot of the Lady of the Gatehouse Ruth asked: “Who keeps house for Miss Grogan, Uncle Simmy?”
“Fo’ Miss Catalpa?” ejaculated the negro. “Sho’, missy, she don’t need nobody but Unc’ Simmy.”
“There is no woman servant?”
“Lor’ bress yo’,” chuckled the black man, “ain’t been no money to pay sarbents since dat Needleses’ Bank done busted. Nebber did hear tell o’ sech a bustification as dat. Dar warn’t re’lly nottin’ lef’ fo’ de rats in de cellar. Das wot Kunnel Wildah say.”
Ruth looked at the old man seriously and with a glance that saw right into the white soul that dwelt in his very black and crippled body: “Who launders her frocks so beautifully – and your trousers, Unc’ Simmy?” was her innocent if somewhat impudent question.
“Ma ol’ woman done hit till she up an’ died ’bout eight ’r nine years ago,” said the coachman.
“And you have done it all since?”
“Oh, ya-as’m! ya-as’m!” exclaimed Unc’ Simmy, briskly. “Miss Catalpa wouldn’t feel right if she knowed anybody else did fo’ her but me – No’m!”
Helen had gone ahead. The old man, his eyes lowered, stood before Ruth in the rain. The girl opened her purse quickly, selected a five dollar bill, and thrust it into his hand.
“Thank you, Unc’ Simmy,” she said firmly. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
A tear found a wrinkle in Unc’ Simmy’s lined face for a sluiceway; but the darkey was still smiling. “Lor’ bress you’, honey!” he murmured. “I dunno wot Unc’ Simmy would do if ‘twarn’t fo’ yo’ rich folks from de Norf. Ah got a lot to t’ank you-uns for ’sides ma freedom! An’ so’s Miss Catalpa,” he added, “on’y she don’t know it.”
“Come along, Ruth!” cried Helen, hopping into the old carriage, the cover of which was now lifted and tied into place. Then, when Ruth joined her and Unc’ Simmy climbed to his seat and spread the oilcloth over his knees, she added, in a whisper: “I saw you, Ruth Fielding! Five dollars! Talk about me being extravagant. Why, I gave him only two dollars for the whole ride.”
“It was worth five to meet Miss Catalpa, wasn’t it?” returned her chum, placidly. And in her own mind she was already thinking up a scheme by which the faithful old negro should be more substantially helped in his lifework of caring for his blind mistress.
CHAPTER VIII – UNDER THE UMBRELLA
The rain had not stopped – not by any means.
Ruth and Helen had never seen so much water fall in so short a time. The roadway, when Unc’ Simmy drove out into it through the ruined gateway, was flooded from side to side. It was like driving through a red, muddy stream.
But the two girls were comparatively dry under the carriage top. They looked out at the drenched country side with interest, meantime talking together about the Lady of the Gatehouse, by which term they ever after spoke of Miss Catalpa.
“The last of one of the F.F.V.‘s, I suppose,” suggested Helen. “I wonder if Nettie’s Aunt Rachel knows her. Nettie says Aunt Rachel knows everybody who is anybody, in the South.”
“I fancy this family got through being well-known years ago. The poor little lady has been lost sight of, I suppose,” Ruth said.
“Yes. All her old friends are dead.”
“Except this old friend sitting up in front of us,” Ruth said, smiling.
“Yes. Isn’t he an old dear?” whispered Helen. “But I wonder if he shows his Miss Catalpa off to all the Northern people who come to the Point?”
Ruth was silent on this matter. Helen did not suspect yet what Ruth had discovered – that Unc’ Simmy was the sole support of the little, blind lady; and Ruth thought she would not tell her chum just now. She wanted to think of some way of materially helping both the old coachman and the Lady of the Gatehouse.
Suddenly Helen uttered a squeal of surprise, and grabbed her friend’s arm:
“Do look there, Ruth Fielding! Whom does that look like?”
Ruth came to her side of the carriage and craned her head out of the window to look forward. In the roadway on that side, a few yards ahead of the ambling horse, strode a figure in the rain that could not be mistaken. So narrow and mannish was the pedestrian that a stranger would scarcely think it a woman. The skirt clung to the rail-like limbs, while the straight coat and silk hat helped to make Miss Miggs look extremely like a man.
“And wet! That’s no name for it,” giggled Helen. “She’s saturated right to the bone – and plenty of bone she has to be saturated to. Let’s give her three cheers as we go by, Ruth.”
“You horrid girl! nothing of the kind,” cried Ruth Fielding, quite exercised. “We must take her in with us – the carriage will hold three. Unc’ Simmy!”
“You’re the greatest girl,” groaned Helen. “You might return good for evil for a year with this person and it would do no good.”
“It always does good,” responded Ruth. “Unc’ Simmy!”
“To whom, I’d like to know?” demanded Helen.
“To me,” snapped Ruth, and this time when she raised her voice she made the old darkey hear.
“Ya-as’m! ya-as’m!” he cried, turning and pulling the old horse down to a welcome walk.
“Let that lady get in here, Unc’ Simmy. We’ll take her to the hotel.”
“Sho’ nuff! Sartainly,” agreed the coachman, and with a flourish he stopped beside the woman who was fairly wading through a muddy river.
The rain was coming down harder again. It did not thunder and lightning much, but the rainfall was fairly appalling to these visitors from the North.
“Do get in, quick!” cried Ruth, opening the low door and peering out from the semi-gloom of the hood.
The school teacher from New England understood instantly what the invitation meant. She plunged toward the carriage and was half inside before she saw who had rescued her from the deluge.
“Get in! get in!” urged Ruth. “Unc’ Simmy will take us right to the hotel.”
Miss Miggs fairly snorted. “What! you? I wouldn’t ride with you in this carriage if we were in the middle of the Atlantic!”
She backed out and stepped right into a puddle of water as deep as her ankles! The excited scream she gave made Helen burst into suppressed laughter. Hearing the girl, the woman glared at her in a way that excited the laughter of the careless Helen to an even greater height.
“Oh, drive on! drive on!” she gasped. “Let her swim if she wants to.”
But Unc’ Simmy would not do this unless Ruth said so. He looked down at the half submerged school teacher from his seat and exclaimed:
“Wal, now! das one foolish woman, das sho’ is! Why don’ she git under kiver when she’s ‘vited t’ do so?”
Just then a new actor appeared on the scene. A big umbrella came into view and its bearer crossed the road, splashing through the accumulated water without regard to the wetting of his own feet and legs.
He gave the half-submerged woman a hand and drew her out to the side of the road, and upon a comparatively dry spot. He had some difficulty with the umbrella just then and raised it high enough for the two girls in the carriage to see his face.
“Oh, Ruthie, look there!” whispered Helen, as the horse started forward. “See who it is!”
“It’s Curly – it’s surely Curly Smith,” muttered Ruth.
“That’s what I tell you,” whispered Helen, fiercely. “And now we can’t speak to him.”
“Not with that Miss Miggs in the way. She is mean enough to tell the police who he is.”
“Never mind,” cried Helen, exultantly, “he got ashore from the fishing boat.”
“But I wonder if he has any money left – and what he will do now. The police may still be looking for him.”
“Oh, a boy as smart as he is would never get caught by the police,” declared Helen, in delight. “I only wish I could speak to him and tell him how glad I am he escaped arrest.”
“You’re an awful-talking girl,” sighed Ruth, as the old horse jogged on. “I wish I could get him to go back to his grandmother – and go back to show the people up there that he is innocent.”
“That does all very well to talk about, Ruth Fielding!” cried Helen. “But suppose he can’t prove himself innocent? Do you want the poor boy to go to jail and stay there the rest of his life?”
CHAPTER IX – SUNSHINE AT THE GATEHOUSE
The shower was over when Unc’ Simmy stopped before the hotel veranda. The two girls were rather bedraggled in appearance; but what would Miss Miggs look like when she arrived!
“I hope we won’t see that mean thing any more,” Helen declared. “She is our Nemesis, I do believe.”
“Don’t let her worry you. She surely punished herself this time,” said Ruth, getting down. “Good-bye Unc’ Simmy. Come for us again to-morrow – only I hope it won’t rain.”
“Ya-as’m! ya-as’m! T’ankee ma’am!” responded the darkey, and when Helen had likewise alighted, he rattled away.
“Goodness!” laughed Helen. “Are you so much in love with that old outfit that you want to ride in it again, Ruthie Fielding?”
“I want to see Miss Catalpa again – don’t you?” returned her chum. “And I would not go to the gatehouse with anybody but Unc’ Simmy. It would be impudent to do so.”
“Oh – yes! that’s so,” admitted Helen. “Come on to luncheon. I have Heavy Stone’s appetite, right now!”
“If so, what will poor Heavy do?” asked Ruth, smiling. “This must be about the time she wishes to exercise her own appetite at Lighthouse Point. Would you deprive her, my dear, of any gastronomic pleasure?”
“Woo-o-o!” blew Helen, making a noise like a whistle. “All ashore that’s going ashore! What big words you do use, Ruth. At any rate, let us partake of the eatables supplied by this hostlery. Come on!”
But they went up to their rooms first to “prink and putter” as Tom always called it.
“Dear old Tom!” sighed his twin. “How I miss him. And what fun we’d have if he were along. Sorry Nettie’s Aunt Rachel doesn’t like boys enough to have made up a mixed party.”
“You’re the only ‘mixed’ party I see around here,” laughed Ruth. “But I wish Tom were here. He’d know just how to get at Curly Smith and do something for him.”
“That’s right! I wish he were here,” sighed Helen.
“Never mind,” laughed Ruth. “Don’t let it take away that famous appetite you just claimed to have. Come on.”
The girls went down and ventured into one of the dining rooms. A smiling colored waiter – “at so much per smile,” as Ruth whispered – welcomed them at the door and seated them at rather a large table. This had been selected for them because their party would soon be augmented.
And this, in fact, happened before night. The girls were lolling in content and happiness upon the veranda when the train came in bringing among other passengers Mrs. Parsons and Nettie.
Mrs. Parsons was a dark-haired and olive-skinned lady, who had been a famous beauty in her youth, and a belle in her part of South Carolina. Rachel Merredith had been quite famous, indeed, in several social centers, and she was well known in Washington and Richmond, as well as in the more Southern cities.
She greeted Helen kindly, but warmly kissed Ruth, having become an admirer of the girl of the Red Mill some time before.
“Here’s my clever little girl,” she said, in her soft, drawling way. “I declare! Ev’ry time I put on my necklace I think of you, Ruthie Fielding, and how greatly beholden to you I am. I tell Nettie, here, that when she receives our heirloom at her coming-out party, she will thank you, too.”
“I don’t have to wait till then, Aunt Rachel!” cried Nettie, squeezing the plump shoulders of the girl of the Red Mill. “Isn’t it nice to see you both again? How jolly!”
“That’s a new word Nettie got up No’th,” said her Aunt Rachel. “Tell me, dears: Have they treated you right, here at the hotel?”
The girls assured her that the management had been very kind to them. Then the question was asked: What had they done to kill time?
Helen rattled off a dozen things she and Ruth had dabbled in that afternoon – or, “evening” as the Virginians say; but it was Ruth who mentioned their ride in the rain with old Unc’ Simmy.
“To the gatehouse? Where is that?” asked Aunt Rachel, lazily.
Between bursts of laughter Helen tried to tell her about the queer old negro and his dilapidated turnout; but it was Ruth who softly explained to Mrs. Parsons about Miss Catalpa and the faithful old darkey’s relations to her.
“Grogan?” repeated the lady. “Yes, yes, I remember the name. Who doesn’t? Major Grogan, her father, was a famous leader in the Lost Cause. Oh, dear me, Ruthie! We are still so poor in the South that the family of many a hero has come down to want. Catalpa Grogan? And you say she is blind?”
“She said we might come again and see her before we left the Point,” suggested Ruth, gently.
Mrs. Rachel Parsons looked at her understandingly. “Quite right, my dear. We will go. I will find out about this lawyer, Colonel Wilder, and he can probably tell me all we need to know. She and the old negro shall be helped – that is the least we can do.”
So, the next morning, all in the glorious sunshine that is usually the weather condition at Old Point Comfort, the party climbed into Unc’ Simmy’s old barouche and set out on the drive. Mrs. Parsons accepted the dilapidated turnout as quite a matter of course.
“Don’t fret about me, girls,” she said, when Helen said that they should have taken a different equipage.
Ruth had already begun to get the “slant” of the Southern mind. The Southerners respected themselves, and were inordinately proud of their name and blood; but they could cheerfully go without many of the conveniences of life which Northerners would consider a distinct privation. Poverty among them was no disgrace; rather, it was to be expected. They cheerfully made the best of it, and enjoyed what good things they had without allowing caviling care to corrode their pleasure.
The sunshine drenched them as they rolled over the now dusty road, as the rain had drenched the chums the day before. Yonder was the hole beside the roadway into which Miss Miggs had been half submerged, and from which she was rescued by the unfortunate Curly Smith.
Helen hilariously related this incident to Nettie and her aunt. But, warned by Ruth, she said nothing about the identity of the boy.
“I hope we shall not meet that woman again,” Ruth said, with a sigh. “She surely would make a scene, Mrs. Parsons. You don’t know how mean she can be.”
“And a school teacher?” was the reply. “Fancy!”
They arrived at the gatehouse and Ruth begged Unc’ Simmy to stop and ask if Miss Catalpa would receive them.
“Give her my card, too, boy,” said Mrs. Parsons, as the smiling old man climbed down from his seat.
“Ya-as’m! ya-as’m!” said Unc’ Simmy, rolling his eyes, for he saw that Mrs. Parsons was “one of de quality,” as he expressed it. “Sho’ will.”
They were not kept waiting long. Miss Grogan was too much the lady to strive for effect. She received them, as she had the girls, on her porch; but this time in the sunshine.
It was a beautiful old front yard, hidden by an untrimmed hedge from the highway; and the end of the porch where the blind woman sat was now dressed with several old chairs that her guests might sit down. It was likely that Unc’ Simmy had brought these out himself, foretelling that there would be visitors.
“I am glad to see you,” Miss Catalpa said. She remembered Ruth and Helen when she clasped their hands, distinguishing between them, although she had “seen” them but once.
To Mrs. Parsons she confessed: “These young girls came in the rain and cheered me up. I love the young. Don’t you, ma’am?”
“I do,” sighed Aunt Rachel. “I’d give anything for my own youth.”
“No, no,” returned Miss Catalpa, shaking her head. “Life gets better as we grow mellow. That’s what I tell them all. I do not regret my youth, although ’twas spent comparatively free from care. And now – ”
She waved the knitting in her hand, and laughed – her low, bird-like call. “The good Lord will provide. He always has.”
Mrs. Parsons, being a Southerner herself, could talk confidentially to Miss Catalpa. It seemed that several names were known to them in common; and the visitor from South Carolina learned how and where to find the particular “Kunnel Wildah” who had the disposal of Miss Catalpa’s affairs in his hands.
The party had a very pleasant visit with the blind woman. Unc’ Simmy appeared suddenly before them, his coachman’s coat and gloves discarded, and a rusty black coat in place of the livery. He bore a tray with high, beautifully thin, tinkling glasses of lemonade, with a sprig of mint in each.
“Nobody makes lemonade quite like Uncle Simmy,” Miss Catalpa said kindly, and the old negro’s face shone like a polished kitchen range at the praise. It was evident that he fairly worshiped his mistress.
The visitors left at last. Helen understood now why they had come. That afternoon the girls were left to their own devices while Mrs. Parsons sought out Colonel Wilder and made some provision for helping in the support of Miss Catalpa and her old servant.
“No, my dear,” she said to Ruth. “You may help a little; but not much. Wait until you become a self-supporting woman – as you will be, I know. Then you can have the full pleasure of helping other people as you desire. I can only enjoy it because my cotton fields have made me rich. When we use money that has been left to us, or given to us in some way, for charitable purposes, we lose the sweeter taste of giving away that which we have actually earned.
“And I thank you, my dear,” she added, “for giving me the opportunity of helping Miss Grogan and Uncle Simmy.”
