"I"d like to see you!" retorted Dudley wrathfully, and Nicholas had squared up for the first blow, when before his swimming gaze a defender intervened.
"You jest let him alone!" cried a voice, and the flutter of a blue cotton skirt divided Dudley from his adversary. "You jest let him alone.
If you call him common I"ll hit you, an"--an" you can"t hit me back!"
"Eugie, you ought to be--" began Bernard, but she pushed the combatants aside with decisive thrusts of her sunburned little hand, and planted herself upon the threshold, her large, black eyes glowing like shaded lamps.
"He wan"t doin" nothin" to you, and you jest let him be. He"s goin" to tote my books home, an" you shan"t touch him. I reckon I know what"s common as well as you do--an" he ain"t--he ain"t common."
Then she caught Nicholas"s arm and marched off like a dispensing providence with a va.s.sal in tow. Nicholas followed obediently. He was sufficiently cowed into non-resistance, and he felt a wholesome awe of his defender, albeit he wished that it had been a boy like himself instead of a slip of a girl with short skirts and a sunbonnet. At the bottom of his heart there existed an instinctive contempt of the s.e.x which Eugenia represented, developed by the fact that it was not force but weakness that had vanquished his victorious opponent. Dudley Webb was a gentleman, and only a bully would strike a girl, even if she were a spitfire--the term by which he characterised Eugenia. He remembered suddenly her exultant, "an" you can"t hit me back!" and it seemed to him that, even in the righteous cause of his deliverance, she had taken an unfair and feminine advantage of the handsome boy for whom he cherished a shrinking admiration.
As for Eugenia herself, she was troubled by no such misgivings. She walked slightly in front of him, her blue skirt swinging briskly from side to side, her white sunbonnet hanging by its strings from her shoulders. Above the starched ruffles rose her small dark head and white profile, and Nicholas could see the determined curve of her chin and the humorous tremor of her nostril. It was a vivid little face, devoid of colour except for the warm mouth, and sparkling with animation which burned steadily at the white heat of intensity--but to Nicholas she was only a plain, dark, little girl, with an unhealthy pallor of complexion.
He was grateful, nevertheless, and when his first regret that she was not a boy was over he experienced a thrill of affection. It was the first time that any one had deliberately taken his part in the face of opposing odds, and the stand seemed to bring him closer to his companion. He held her books tightly, and his face softened as he looked at her, until it was transfigured by the warmth of his emotion. Then, as they pa.s.sed the college grounds, where a knot of students greeted Eugenia hilariously, and turned upon the Old Stage Road, he reached out timidly to take the small hand hanging by her side.
"It"s better walkin" on this side the road," he said with a mild a.s.sumption of masculine supremacy. "I wouldn"t walk in the dust."
Eugenia looked at him gravely and drew her hand away.
"You mustn"t do that," she responded severely. "When I said you weren"t common I didn"t mean that you really weren"t, you know; because, of course, you are. I jest meant that I wouldn"t let them say so."
Nicholas stood in the centre of the road and stared at her, his face flushing and a slow rage creeping into his eyes.
For a moment he stood in trembling silence. Then he threw the books from him into the sand at her feet, and with a choking sob sped past her to vanish amid a whirl of dust in the sunny distance.
Eugenia looked thoughtfully down upon her scattered possessions. She was all alone upon the highway, and around her the open fields rolled off into the green of far-off forests. The sunshine fell hotly over her, and straight ahead the white road lay like a living thing.
She stooped, gravely gathered up the books, and walked resolutely on her way, a cloud of yellow b.u.t.terflies fluttering like loosened petals of full-blown b.u.t.tercups about her head.
V
Battie Hall was a square white frame house with bright-green window shutters and a deep front porch, supported by heavy pillars, and reached from the gravelled walk below by a flight of rugged stone steps. In the rear of the house, through which a wide hall ran, dividing the rooms of the first floor, there was another porch similar to the one at the front, except that the pillars were hidden in musk roses and the long benches at either side were of plain, unpainted pine. At the foot of the back steps a narrow, well-trodden path led to the vegetable garden, which was separated from the yard by what was called "Cattle Lane"--a name derived from the morning and evening pa.s.sage of the cows on their way to and from the pasture.
Beginning at the gate into the garden, where the tall white palings were gay with hollyhocks and heavy-headed sunflowers, a grapevine trellis extended to the farmyard at the end of the lane, whence an overgrown walk led across tangled meadows to the negro "quarters"--a long, whitewashed row of almost deserted cabins. Since the close of the war the "quarters" had fallen partly into disuse and had decayed rapidly, though some few were still tenanted by the former slaves, who gathered as of old in the doorways of an evening to strum upon broken-stringed banjos and to wrap the hair of their small offspring. Beyond this row there was a slight elevation called "Hickory Hill," where Uncle Ishmael had lived for more than seventy years; and at the foot of the hill, on the other side, near "Sweet Gum Spring," there were several neatly patched log cabins occupied by the house servants, who held in social contempt the field hands in the neighbouring "quarters." Overlooking the "Sweet Gum Spring," on a loftier hill, was the family graveyard, which was walled off from the orchard near by, where the twisted old fruit trees had long since yielded the larger part of their abundance.
At the front of the Hall the view was vastly different. There the great blue-gra.s.s lawn was thickly studded with ancient elms and maples, whose shade fell like a blanket upon the velvety sod beneath. The gravelled walk, beginning at the front steps, was bordered on either side by rows of closely clipped box, which ended in the long avenue of cedars leading from the lawn to the distant turnpike. To the right of the house there were three pointed aspens, which shivered like skeletons in silver, holding grimly aloof from the vivid pink of the crepe myrtle at their feet. Beyond them was the well-house, with a long moss-grown trough where the horses and the cows came to drink, and across the road began the cornlands, which stretched in rhythmic undulations to the dark belt of the pine forest. On the left of the box walk, in a direct line from the three aspens, towered a huge sycamore, and from one of its protecting arms, shaded by large fan-like leaves, a child"s swing dangled by a thick hemp rope. Near the sycamore, where an old oak had fallen, the rotting stump was hidden by a high "rockery," edged with conch sh.e.l.ls, and over the rough gray rocks a tangle of garden flowers ran wild--sweet-william, petunias, phlox, and the mossy stems of red and yellow portulaca. On the western side of the house there was a spreading mimosa tree, its sensitive branches brushing the green shutters of a window in the second story.
The Hall had been built by the general"s father when, because of family dissensions, he had decided to move from a central county to the more thinly settled country surrounding Kingsborough. There the general had pa.s.sed his boyhood, and there he had left his wife when he had gone to the war. At the beginning of the struggle he had freed his slaves and buckled on his sword.
"They may have the negroes, and welcome," he had said to the judge. "Do you think I"d fight for a d.a.m.ned darkey? It"s the principle, sir--the principle!"
And the judge, who had not freed his servants, but who would as soon have thought of using a profane word as of alluding in disrespectful terms to a family portrait, had replied gravely:
"My dear Tom, you will find principle much better to fight for than to live on."
But the general had gone with much valour and more vehemence. He had enlisted as a private, had risen within a couple of years to a colonelcy, and had been raised to the rank of general by the unanimous voice of his neighbours upon his return home. After an enthusiastic reception at Kingsborough he had mounted a heavy-weight horse and ridden out to the Hall, to find the grounds a tangle of weeds and his wife with the pallor of death upon her brow. She had rallied at his coming, had lingered some sad years an invalid in the great room next the parlour, and had died quietly at last as she knelt in prayer beside her high white bed.
For days after this the empty house was like a coffin. The children ran in tears through the shuttered rooms, and the servants lost their lingering shred of discipline. When the funeral was over, the general made some spasmodic show of authority, but his heart was not in it, and he wavered for lack of the sustaining hold of his wife"s frail hand. He dismissed the overseer and undertook to some extent the management of the farm, but the crops failed and the hay rotted in the fields before it was got into the barn. Then, as things were galloping from bad to worse, a letter came from his sister, Miss Christina, and in a few days she arrived with a cartload of luggage and a Maltese cat in a wicker basket. From the moment when she stepped out of the carriage at the end of the avenue and ascended the box-trimmed walk to the stone steps, the difficulties disentangled and the domestic problems dwindled into the simplest of arithmetical sums. By some subtle law of the influence of the energetic she a.s.sumed at once the rights of authority. From the master of the house to the field hands in the "quarters," all bent to her regenerating rule. She opened the windows in the airy rooms, cleaned off the storeroom shelves with soda and water, and put the marauding small negroes to weeding the lawn. Before her pa.s.sionate purification the place was purged of the dust of years. The hardwood floors of the wide old halls began to shine like mirrors, the a.s.sortment of odds and ends in the attic was relegated to an outhouse, and even the general"s aunt, Miss Griselda Grigsby, was turned unceremoniously out of her apartment before the all-pervading soap-suds of cleaning day.
As for the servants, a sudden miraculous zeal possessed them. Within a fortnight the garden rows were hoed free from gra.s.s, the hops were gathered from the fence, and the weeds on the lawn vanished beneath small black fingers. Even the annual threshing of the harvest was accomplished under the overseeing eye of "Miss Chris," as she was called by the coloured population. During the week that the old machine poured out its chaffless wheat and the driver whistled in the centre of the treadmill Miss Chris appeared at the barn at noon each day to warn the hands against waste of time and to see that the mules were well watered.
But the revolutions without were as naught to the internal ones. Aunt Verbeny, the cook, whose tyranny had extended over thirty years, was a.s.sisted from her pedestal, and the hen-house keys were removed from the nail of the kitchen wall.
"This will never do, Verbeny," said Miss Chris a month after her arrival. "We could not possibly have eaten three dozen chickens within the last week. I am afraid you take them home without asking me."
Aunt Verbeny, a fat old woman with a shining black skin, smoothed her checked ap.r.o.n with offended dignity.
"Hi! Miss Chris, ain"t I de cook?" she exclaimed.
But Miss Chris preserved her ground.
"That is no excuse for you taking what doesn"t belong to you," she replied severely. "If this keeps up I shall be obliged to let Delphy do the cooking. There won"t be a chicken in the hen-house by the end of the month."
Aunt Verbeny still smoothed her ap.r.o.n, but her authority was shaken, and she felt it. She gave a slow grunt of dissatisfaction.
"Dese ain"t de doin"s I"se used ter," she protested, and then, beneath the undaunted eyes of Miss Chris, she melted into propitiation.
"Des" let dat ar chicken alont, Miss Chris," she said, skilfully reducing the charge to a single offence. "Des" let dat ar chicken alont.
"Tain" no use yo" rilin" yo"se"f "bout dat. Hit"s done en it"s been done. Hit don"t becomst de quality ter fl.u.s.ter demse"ves over de gwines on uv er low-lifeted fowl. You des" bresh yo"se"f down an steddy like hit ain" been fool you ef you knowed yo"se"f. You des" let dat ar chicken be er little act uv erdultery betweenst you en me. Ef"n it"s gone, hit"ll stay gone!"
Whereupon Miss Chris retreated, leaving her opponent in possession of the kitchen floor.
But from this day forth the hen-house was locked at night and unlocked in the morning by the hand of Miss Chris, and Aunt Verbeny"s overweening ill-temper diminished with her authority.
Miss Chris had been a beauty in her day, but as she pa.s.sed middle age the family failing seized upon her, and she grew huge and unwieldy, the disproportion of her enormous figure to her small feet giving her an awkward, waddling walk.
She had a profusion of silvery-white hair, worn in fluffy curls about her large pink face, soft brown eyes, and a full double chin that fell over a round cameo brooch bearing the head of Minerva set in a plain gold band. In winter she wore gowns of black Henrietta cloth, made with plain bodices and full plaited skirts; in summer she wore the same skirts with loosely fitting white linen sacques, trimmed in delicate embroideries, with muslin ruffles falling over her plump hands. When she came to the Hall she brought with her innumerable reminiscences of her childhood, which she told in a musical voice with girlish laughter.
After his sister"s arrival the general discontinued his fitful overseering. He rose early and spent his long days sitting upon the front porch, smoking an old briar pipe and reading the Richmond papers.
Occasionally he would ride at a jogging pace round the fields, giving casual directions to the workers, but as his weight increased he found it difficult to mount into the saddle, and, at last, desisted from the attempt. He preferred to sit in peace in his cane rocking chair, looking down the box walk into the twilight of the cedar avenue, or gazing placidly beyond the aspens and the well-house to the streaked ribbons of the ripening corn. It was said that he had never been the same man since the death of his wife. Certainly he laughed as heartily and his jovial face had taken a ruddier tint, but there was a superficiality in his exuberant cheerfulness which told that it was not well rooted below the surface. His jokes were as ready as ever, but he had fallen into an absent-minded habit of repet.i.tion, and sometimes repeated the same stories at breakfast and supper. He talked freely of his dead wife, he even made ill-placed jests about his widowerhood, and he never failed to kiss a pair of red lips when the chance offered; but, for all that, his gaze often wandered past the huge sycamore to the family graveyard, where rank periwinkle grew and mocking-birds nested. Through the long summer not a Sunday pa.s.sed that he did not take fresh flowers to one of the neatly trimmed mounds where the marble headpiece read:
"AMELIA TUCKER,
BELOVED WIFE OF
THOMAS BATTLE,
DIED APRIL 3RD., 18--.
"_I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord._""
Sometimes the children were with him, but usually he went alone, and once or twice he returned with red eyelids and asked for a julep.
There was little to fill his life now, and he divided it between Bernard and Eugenia, whom he adored, and the negroes, whom he reviled for diversion and spoiled to make amends.
"They will break me!" he would declare a dozen times a day. "They will turn me out of house and home. Here"s old Sambo"s Claudius come back and moved into the quarters. He hasn"t a cent to his name, and he"s the most no "count scamp on earth. It"s worse than before the war--upon my soul it is! Then they lived on me and I got an odd piece of work out of them. Now they live on me and don"t do a d.a.m.ned lick!"