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 p.r.o.ne 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s, 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 ma.s.sive 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 ap.r.o.ns, 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."
CHAPTER XII-THE BOY AT THE WAREHOUSE
"Goodness me!" cried Helen to Nettie. "How do you get along with so many of these colored people under foot? I had thought it might be fun to have so many servants; but I don"t believe I could stand it."
"Oh, I don"t think Aunt Rachel has too many," Nettie said carelessly.
"We don"t mind having them around. As long as their faces are smiling and we know they are happy, we don"t mind. You see, we Southerners actually like the negroes; you Northerners only _say_ you do."
"Hear! hear!" cried Ruth. "There is a difference."