Kitabı oku: «Ruth Fielding Down in Dixie; Great Times in the Land of Cotton», sayfa 5
CHAPTER X – AN ADVENTURE IN NORFOLK
The party was off on its real tour into Dixie the next day. They were to take the route in a leisurely fashion to the Merredith plantation, and, as Nettie laughingly put it, “would go all around Robin Hood’s barn” to reach that South Carolinian Garden of Eden.
“But we want you to really see something of the South on the way; it will be so warm – or, will seem so to you No’therners – when you come back, that you will only be thinking of taking the steamer at Norfolk for New York.
“Now you shall see something of Richmond and Charleston, anyway,” concluded the Louisiana girl. “And next winter I hope you’ll go home with me to my own canebrakes and bayous. Then we’ll have a good time, I assure you.”
Ruth and Helen were having a good time. Everybody about the hotel treated them like grown-up young ladies – and of course such deferential attentions delighted two schoolgirls just set free from the scholastic yoke.
They went across the bay on the ferry and landed at Norfolk. A trip to the Navy Yard was the first thing, and as Mrs. Parsons knew some of the officers there, the party was very courteously treated. They might have visited the war vessels lying in Hampton Roads; but it seemed so hot on the water that the chums from the North voted for a trip by surface car to Norfolk’s City Park.
The lawns had not yet been burned brown and the trees were beautifully leaved out. The park was a pleasant place and in it is one of the best small zoölogical parks in the East. The deer herd was particularly fine – such pretty, graceful creatures! All would have gone well had not Helen received an unexpected fright as they were watching the beautiful beasts.
“You would better not stand so near that grating, Helen,” Nettie told her, as they were in front of the fence of the deer range.
“How am I going to feed this pretty, soft-nosed thing with grass if I don’t stand near?” demanded Helen.
“But you don’t have to feed the deer,” laughed Nettie.
“No. But there’s no sign that says you sha’n’t,” complained Helen. “And I don’t see – ”
Just then there was a fierce whistle and a big stag charged. Helen looked all around – save in the right direction – for the sound. She was leaning against the wire fence, but with her head turned so that she did not see the gentle little doe bound away as her master came savagely down the slope.
The next instant the brute crashed against the fence and the shock of his collision sent Helen to the ground. Although the angry stag was on the other side of the woven-wire fence, so savage did he appear that other people standing about ran screaming away.
The stag was tearing up the sod with his forefeet and throwing himself against the shaking fence as though determined to get at the prostrate Helen.
The latter was really hurt a little, and so badly frightened that she could not arise instantly. Nettie was the nearest of her party; but she was trembling and crying. Ruth was too far away, as was Mrs. Parsons, to help her chum immediately, though she started running in her direction.
But there was a rescuer at hand. A boy in a faded suit of overalls, who must have been working near, ran down to drag the frightened girl away from the fence. As he passed an old gentleman on the walk he seized the latter’s cane and darting between Helen and the fence, dealt the angry stag a heavy blow upon the nose.
Although the wire-fence saved the beast from serious injury, the blow was heavy enough to make him fall back and cease his charges against the wire netting. Then the boy helped Helen to her feet.
“Oh!” shrieked the frightened girl. And after that, although the boy quickly slipped away through the gathering crowd, and out of sight, Helen said no other word.
“Oh, my dear!” gasped Ruth, reaching her. “You did not even thank him.”
“I know it,” whispered Helen.
“Are – are you hurt, dear?”
“Only my dignity is hurt,” confessed her chum, beginning to laugh hysterically.
“But that boy – ”
“Hush, Ruthie!” begged Helen, her lips close to her chum’s ear. “Do you know who he was?”
“Why – I – Of course not! I did not see his face.”
“It was Curly. Don’t say a word,” breathed Helen. “Here comes a policeman.”
Ruth was as much amazed as Helen at the unexpected appearance of Henry Smith. He was constantly bobbing up before them just like an imp in a pantomime.
Their friends hurried the chums away from the caged deer and the crowd that had gathered. Helen had a few bruises but was not, fortunately, really injured. But she confessed that she had seen all the deer she cared to see for the time.
“And I thought they were such gentle, affectionate creatures,” she sighed. “Why, that one was as savage as a bear!”
They returned to the water-front and went aboard the Richmond boat in good season for dinner. Ruth and Helen were rather used to boat travel they thought by this time, and they found this smaller craft quite as pleasant as the big steamer on which they had come down the coast.
While they were at table in the saloon the boat started, and so nicely was it eased off, and so quiet was the water, that the girls had no idea the vessel had started.
The girls ran out on deck, arranged a comfortable place for Mrs. Parsons, and there watched the panoramic view of the roads and the shores until darkness fell.
“We shall miss many of the beauties of the James River plantations and towns,” Mrs. Parsons said; “by taking this night boat; but we shall have a good night’s sleep and see more of Richmond to-morrow than we otherwise could.”
The chums did not have quite as much freedom on the river trip as they did coming down on the New Union Line boat; for Mrs. Parsons insisted upon an early bedtime. She would not have liked their sitting out on the deck alone at a late hour. She did not believe in too much freedom for young girls of her niece’s age.
However, she was very pleasant to travel with. Ruth and Helen marveled at the attention Mrs. Parsons received from all the employees of the boat, both white and black.
“And she doesn’t have to tip extravagantly to get service,” Ruth pointed out to Helen. “You see, these darkeys consider it an honor to attend Mrs. Parsons. We Northerners are interlopers, after all; they sell us their servile attentions at a high price; but they are glad to serve the descendants of their old masters. There is a bond between the whites and blacks of the South that we cannot quite understand.”
“I guess we’re too independent and want to help ourselves too much,” Helen said. “You let me alone, Ruth Fielding, and I’ll loll around just like Nettie does and let the colored people fetch and carry for me.”
“You lazy little thing!” Ruth threw at her, laughing. “It doesn’t become your father’s daughter to long for such methods and habits. Goodness! the negroes themselves are so slow they give me the fidgets.”
In the morning they awoke from sleep as the boat was being docked. It was another beautiful, sunshiny day. The negro dockhands lolled upon the wharves. Up the river they could see the bridge to Manchester and the rapids, up which no boat could sail.
They ate their breakfast in a leisurely manner on the boat, and then took an open carriage on Main Street, where the sickish odor of the tobacco factories was all that spoiled the ride.
They rode east and passed the site of the old Libby tobacco warehouse – execrated by the prisoners during the Civil War as “Libby Prison” – and saw, too, Libby Hill Park, Marshall’s Park and the beautiful Chimborazo reservation.
Coming back they climbed the Broad Street hill and stopped at the hotel, remaining there for rest and luncheon. Then the girls walked on Broad Street and saw the shops and bought a few souvenirs and some needfuls, while Mrs. Parsons remained in the hotel. The sun was hot, but the air was dry and invigorating.
Later in the afternoon the whole party went down into Capitol Square – a very beautiful park, in which are located the state-house, the library, and the Washington Monument.
“Besides,” declared Helen, “’most a million squirrels. Did you ever see so many of the little dears? And see how tame they are.”
The squirrels and the children with their black nurses in Capitol Square are among the pleasantest sights of Richmond. There was the old bell tower, too, near the North Twelfth Street side, which interested the girls, and they walked back to the hotel by way of Franklin Street and saw the old home of General Robert E. Lee and some other famous dwellings.
The party was to remain one night in Richmond, and in the morning the girls went alone to the Confederate Museum on Clay Street, which during the Civil War was the “White House of the Confederacy.”
“I leave you young people to do the rest of the sightseeing,” Mrs. Parsons said, and took her breakfast in bed, waited on by a colored maid.
But at noon she appeared, trim and fresh again, in time for luncheon and the ride to the railway station where they took the train for the South.
“Now we’re off for the Land of Cotton!” cried Helen. “This dip into Dixie so far has only been a taste. What adventures are before us now, do you suppose, Ruth?”
Her chum could not tell her. Indeed, neither of them could have imagined quite what was to happen to them before they again turned their faces north for the return journey.
CHAPTER XI – AT THE MERREDITH PLANTATION
The noontide bell at some distant cotton house sent a solemn note – like an alarm – ringing across the lowlands. The warm, sweet smell of the brakes almost overpowered the girls from the North. And lulling their senses, too, were the bird-notes, seemingly from every tree and bush.
Long festoons of moss hung from some of the wide-armed trees. Here and there, cleared hammocks were shaded by mighty oaks which may have been standing when the first white settlers on this coast of the New World established themselves at Georgetown, not many miles away.
Riding in the comfortable open carriage, behind a handsome pair of bay horses, and driven by a liveried coachman with a footman likewise caparisoned on the seat beside him, Ruth and Helen, as guests of Mrs. Rachel Parsons and Nettie, had already come twenty miles from the railroad station.
Despite the moisture and the heat, the girls from the North were enjoying themselves hugely. The week that had passed since they had met Nettie and her aunt at Old Point Comfort had been a most delightful one for the chums.
The long railroad journey south from Richmond had been broken by stops at points of interest, including New Bern, Wilmington, Pee Dee, and finally Charleston. The latter city had interested the girls immensely – quite as much as Richmond.
After two days there, the party had come back as far as Lanes and had there taken the branch road for Georgetown, at the mouth of the Pee Dee River, one of the oldest towns in the South, and around which linger many memories of Revolutionary days. The guests would not see this old town until a later date, however.
Leaving the train at a small station in the forest, they were met by this handsome equipage and were now approaching the Merredith plantation. Ruth, as silent as her companions, was contrasting in her own mind this beautiful carriage and pair with the old Grogan barouche, the knock-kneed horse, and Unc’ Simmy.
“Two phases of the new South,” she thought, for Ruth was rather prone to a kind of mental problem that does not usually interest young folk of her age. “Here is the progressive, up-to-date, money-making class represented by Mrs. Parsons, reviving the ancient fortunes of her house. While poor Miss Catalpa and her single faithful servant represent the helpless and hopeless class, ruined by the war and – probably – ruined before the war, only they had not found it out!
“The Southern families who are reviving will, in time, be wealthier than they were under the old regime. But how many poor people like Miss Catalpa there must be scattered through this Dixieland!”
The party soon came to where two huge oaks, scarred deeply by the axe, intermingled their branches over the roadway.
“This is our gateway,” said Mrs. Parsons. “Here is the beginning of the Merredith plantation.”
“Oh, Mrs. Parsons!” cried Helen, pointing to one side. “What is that pole there? Or is it a dead tree?”
“A dead pine. And it has been dead more than a hundred years, yet it still stands,” explained the lady. “They say that to its lowest branch was hung a British spy in Revolutionary times – ‘as high as Haman’; but re’lly, how they ever climbed so high to affix the rope over the limb, I cannot say.”
She spoke to the coachman in a minute: “Jeffreys!”
“Yes, ma’am,” replied the black man.
“Drive by the quarters.” She said “quahtahs.” “It will give the children a chance to see us, and Dilsey and Patrick Henry won’t want them coming to the Big House and littering up the lawn.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the coachman and swung the horses into a by-road.
All the drives were beautifully kept. If there chanced to be a piece of grass in a forest opening, it was clipped like a lawn. This end of the great plantation was kept as well as an English park. Occasionally they saw men at work amid the groves of lovely shade trees.
Suddenly there burst upon their view a sloping upland, dotted here and there with groups of outbuildings and stables, checkered by fenced pastures in which sleek cattle and horses grazed. There were truck patches, too, belonging to the quarters, where the negroes lived.
These whitewashed cabins, with their attendant chicken-runs and pig-pens – all whitewashed, too – were near at hand. As the carriage swung out of the forest, the hum of a busy village broke upon the ears of the girls, as the sight of all this rich and rolling upland burst upon their view.
The green trees and the green grass contrasted with the white cots made a delightfully cool picture for the eye.
The mistress’ equipage was sighted immediately and there boiled out of the cabins a seemingly never-ending army of children and dogs. The dogs were all of the hound breed, and the children were of one variety, too – brown, bare-legged pickaninnies, about all of a size, and most of them bow-legged.
But they were a laughing, happy crowd as they came tearing along the lane to meet the carriage. The hullabaloo of the dogs and children brought the mothers to the cabin doors, or around from their washtubs at the rear of the cabins. They, too, were smiling and – many of them – in clean frocks and new bandanas, prepared to meet “de quality.”
And there were so many of them, bowing and smiling at “Mistis,” as they called Mrs. Parsons, and bidding her welcome! It was like a village turning out to greet the feudal owner of the property. Mrs. Parsons seemed to know all of them by name, and she shook hands with the older women, and spoke particularly to some of the young women with babies in their arms. Noticeably there were no children over seven or eight years old at home; nor were there any young men or women, save the few married girls with infants. Everybody else was at work in the fields, Ruth learned. And she learned, too, in time, that the Merredith plantation was one of the largest cotton farms in the state, and one of the most productive.
A little later, however, as they rode on, the visitors learned that there was something beside cotton grown on the estate. On the upland they came to a field of corn. It extended farther than their eyes could see – a waving, black-green, waist-high sea, its blades clashing like a forest of green swords.
“How many acres in this piece, Jeffreys?” asked Mrs. Parsons, of the coachman, seeing that the two Northern girls were interested.
“Four hundred acres, ma’am. I hear Mistah Lomaine say so.”
“We passed huge corn and grain fields when we went West to Silver Ranch,” Ruth said. “But mostly in the night, I believe; and the corn was not in the same stage of growth as this.”
“Cotton is still king in the South,” laughed Mrs. Parsons; “but Corn has become his prime-minister. I believe some of our bottom lands will raise even better corn than this.”
They rode steadily on, having taken a considerable sweep around to see the “quarters,” and now approached the Big House. And it was big! Ruth and Helen never heard it called anything but the “Big House” by anybody on the plantation.
It was set upon a low mound in a grove of whispering trees. The lawns about it were like velvet; the grass was of that old-fashioned, short, “door-yard” kind which finds root in many door-yards of the South and spreads slowly and surely where the land is strong enough to sustain it. It needs little attention from the lawnmower, but makes a thick, velvety carpet.
The roots of some of the old trees had been exposed so many years that their upper surface had rotted away, and in the rich mold thus made the grass had taken root, upholstering low, inviting seats with its green velvet.
The house itself – mansion it had better be called – was painted white, of course, even to its brick foundation. The massive roof of the veranda which sheltered the second-floor windows as well as those of the first floor on the front of the main building, was upheld by six great fluted pillars as sound now as when cut from an equal number of forest monarchs and raised into place, a hundred years before.
On either side wings were built on to the main house, each big enough for the largest family Ruth Fielding had ever known! What could possibly be done with all those bedrooms upstairs was a mystery to her inquiring mind until Nettie told her that, in the old slavery days, long before the war, and when people traveled only on horseback and by coach, a house party at the Merredith plantation meant the inviting for a week or two of twenty-five ladies and as many gentlemen, and each had his or her black attendant – valet, or maid – that had to be sheltered in the Big House at night, although coachmen and footmen, and other “outriders” could find room in the cabins, or stables.
Both wings were closed now; but the windows remained dressed, for Mrs. Parsons would not allow any part of the old house to look ugly and forlorn. Twice a year an army of colored women went through the empty rooms and cleaned and scoured, just as though again a vast company were expected.
The small retinue of house servants met the carriage at the foot of the broad steps. They were mostly smiling young negroes, the men in livery and the girls in cotton gowns, stiffly starched aprons, and white caps. There was a broad, unctuous looking, mahogany colored “Mammy” on the top step, and a gray-wooled, bent, old negro at the door of the carriage when it stopped.
“Good day, ma’am! Good-day!” said the old man to Mrs. Parsons. “My duty to you.”
He waved away the officious footman and insisted upon helping the mistress of the Merredith plantation down with all the pompous service of a major-domo.
“We are all well, Patrick Henry,” said Aunt Rachel. “Is everything right on the plantation?”
“Yes’m; yes’m. I’ll be proud to make my report at any time, ma’am.”
“Oh, to-morrow, I pray, Patrick Henry,” cried Mrs. Parsons. She ran lightly up the steps and the big colored woman, waiting there with smiling lips but overflowing eyes, gathered the lady to her broad bosom in a bearlike hug.
“Ma honey-gal! Ma little mistis!” she crooned, rocking the white woman’s head to and fro upon her bosom. “Dilsey don’t reckon she’ll welcome yo’ here so bery many mo’ times; but she’s sho’ glad of dishyer one!”
“You are good for many years more, you know it, Mammy Dilsey!” laughed Mrs. Parsons, breathlessly.
“Here’s Miss Nettie,” she said, “and two of her school friends – Miss Ruth and Miss Helen. Of course, there is no need to ask you, Mammy Dilsey, if everything is ready for them?”
“Sho’, chile!” chuckled the old negress. “Yo’ knows I wouldn’t fo’git nottin’ like dat. De quality allus is treated proper at Mer’dith. Come along, honeys; dere’s time t’ res’ yo’selfs an’ dress fo’ dinner. We gwine t’ gib yo’ sech anudder dinner as yo’ ain’ seen, Miss Rachel, since yo’ was yere airly in de spring. I know bery well yo’ been stahvin’ ob yo’self in dem hotels in de Norf all dishyer w’ile.”
