Bennet was full of curiosity as to the old town as he looked about on his arrival at Orangeburg with Dr. Tansey, but was also impatient to arrive at his destination. There seemed to be some urgent appeal forcing him on. With this urge on him he secured an automobile and started for the country. Just out of Orangeburg, on the road north, after he had gone not more than a few miles, he came to a swollen stream, called Long Branch, flowing rapidly toward the Edisto.
There was a long foot bridge over this and there had been a temporary bridge for automobiles. For most of the traffic that crossed it, however, there was no bridge; horses, mules and vehicles were forced to wade through. Most southern streams, no matter how small, run through wide swampy areas. Sometimes these streams are shallow at their deepest, while for half mile on each side water may be flowing in the same direction, making a very wide stream but very shallow and clear.
Long Branch was such a stream. On either side of the main channel for a half mile or more, through patches of swamp growth bamboo, and palmetto, there raced over the sand and mud the waters of this stream. In dry seasons the stream narrowed to the main channel, and automobiles could be driven across. At every freshet, however, the stream became swollen and impassable save for horses or high wheeled vehicles.
Bennet's chauffeur, coming to this stream and seeing its swollen, rushing width, drove along till the water was almost awash with the hubs then reversed his levers and started for the shallows again.
"Where're you going?" asked Bennet showing impatience.
"Can't go through there, Mister."
"Why you were almost half through then, I could see the other bank."
"Yes, but that was just where the stream was deepest. It would have been over the motor before long."
"Too bad.—Can't we hurry?"
"Have to go 'roun, State Road way."
"How far?"
"'Bout ten miles."
Bennet groaned inwardly but sank back into his seat. The machine purred its way along the State Road, when once that was reached, and Bennet was content to watch the panorama as field after field of crops passed in one long kaleidoscopic view. This road took Bennet far over by way of Fort Motte, over the long, red, clay hills and winding roads between muddy fields of staple cotton and swaying corn. Here and there was a group of huddled dwellings about which little black, brown and yellow children played, while their elders were to be seen in the fields, hoeing the cotton or ploughing corn. Beyond Fort Motte the roads became sandy and slow for motor vehicles.
It was late in the afternoon when the chauffeur turned in his seat to say:
"We're 'most there now. 'Tain't far now to Colonel Lauriston's lands. He's a mighty big planter.—One of the biggest in Hebron County."
"Oh, you know him, then?"
"Yas Suh. I know him, by sight. Comes to town regular. I got some friends working for him too. He owns mighty nigh all the land hereabouts. What he don't own, the Marleys do. Them two families run things too. The Witts are another big family. But they live a little to the no'th.—Work a lot of colored hands. Work 'em hard too."
"This seems to be pretty good country. There's so much land. It ought to be good for your people too. Do they own any land?"
"Own land. Lord, they don't own their souls. Can't own anything. They get such low pay, and have such a hard time paying up their debts from one year to the other that that's all they can do. Work, eat, live and die. Eat, work, live and die. That's all they do. When we git tired o' that we try the city but that's hard too.
"Why can't you plant enough land to make a surplus from year to year and thus get something ahead?"
"You can do that some places but you can't in this county nor in Truro County.—That's the next county west to this. That's a bad, bad county. Why I know a colored family that lived on a white man's place and couldn't make a living—was in debt all the time. Finally he got another place in another county and was moving away. The white man heard of it, rode after him, met the man with his goods on a wagon. Got in front of him, pulled a gun and made the family turn back to the old house."
"Why didn't your friend go on to the new place?"
"Go on. Lordy. Ef he had gone on he'd a' gone on plumb into eternity. That white man would a' shot up that whole family and got scot free.—He'd a' shot that family to death then claimed he was assaulted and nothing would a' been done about it.
"Colored folks have got no rights out here," he continued. "The young folks get restless and go away. The old folks, born here, are afraid to move for fear of worse.—They stay. They rent on shares or lease and the shares never run up enough to pay bills, and so the leases never run out."
"You don't mean to say the white landlords cheat."
"Oh, no. They don't cheat. The figures never run right and the land never produces enough. You never heard the saying, 'ought's a ought, and a figger's a figger; all fur the white man, none for the nigger.' Well, that's about the way things run in the country. If a black man questions the figures of his landlord, that black man is impudent and must be put in his place, by the lash or the bullet, or the rope. What can we do?"
Sensing the hopelessness of the question and the futility of an answer, Bennet remained silent. They had just passed through a swampy stretch of roadway bordered by a thick growth of gall berry bushes when suddenly there smote their ears a most unearthly scream. It seemed, not like one in pain but more in fright and horror. Bennet reached over to the front seat and touched the driver on the shoulder. They were just at a bend in the road which hid them from a further view. The car was throttled down and was but barely creeping along, both men listening for the sound. Again the scream. This time it sounded closer. At the same time there sounded, as if in answer a long, low, half bellow, half groan, rising to a crescendo of a siren fire alarm and then diminishing till it ended in something like the distant roar of a lion.
Bennet began to feel creepy. He thought of hyenas and other wild animals, then recalled that he had never heard of any such inhabiting this section of the country. He reached for the revolver, Dr. Tansey had forced him to carry. The black chauffeur, frightened at first, regained his composure, turned in his seat and whispered:
"Alligator!"
Before Bennet could reply again came the screams of fright, like that of a frightened woman. Bennet thought it must come from some animal caught by the alligator and was being devoured. They had just turned the curve of the road, the machine in low, when a horrible sight greeted them. In the middle of the road stood an elderly white woman, a bonnet thrown back from her head. Her eyes horror-stricken with fright. While some forty feet in front of her, disputing the roadway was a young alligator, about seven feet long, jaws wide open, showing rows of ferocious fangs, his body lifted from the ground by its feet. Every time the woman turned to retreat the reptile opened its jaws wider and bellowed. When she faced it, however, it refused to leave the road on which it had been surprised and beat the road into dust clouds with its tail. The woman was so frightened she failed to hear the machine come up behind her.
Before Bennet realized what the chauffeur was doing, the latter had stepped from the car and was seeking a piece of wood with which to frighten the reptile from the road. Bennet, however, noted a towing rope in the bottom of the car and thinking he would like to have a live specimen to take with him North, stepped from the car, rope in hand.
The woman was just about to scream again when Bennet's voice sounded in her ear. "Keep still, we'll save you."
While the chauffeur was returning with a broken sapling, Bennet, rope in hand climbed a nearby tree, whose branches overhung the road. From one branch to another he made his way till directly over the reptile, then making a slipnoose he slowly lowered this down in front of the alligator. The reptile's eyes were so blinded with anger that he paid no heed to the noose as it touched the ground in front of him and was slowly dragged about his head till well behind the neck of the brute. The tension was too much for the old woman and she swooned, slumping to the middle of the roadway as she saw the rope about the reptile's body.
The alligator, seeing the motion of the woman's body falling, grew wilder in its anger and lashed the road furiously with its tail, at the same time bellowing fiercely The bellow, however, was shortened as Bennet tightened on the rope and lifted the brute from the ground till only the rear feet and tail were touching. The bellow became a scream as the reptile fought and struggled with this new danger which sought to choke him. In the dashing, swinging, swaying fight, the suddenness of the capture turned the bellowing into screams that were half coughs, Bennet was almost hurled to the ground from his lofty perch.
"'Round the tree, 'round the tree," shouted the chauffeur. "Throw the rope 'round the tree."
Bennet struggled to do this when he caught the advice. Wrapping his legs about the trunk of the limb, wrestler fashion, he fought and pulled till almost exhausted. Finally he managed to lift the alligator from the ground and tie the rope securely to the limb. Panting and gasping after his struggle he returned to the ground. The elderly woman was just regaining consciousness when he reached her. The alligator was twisting, turning and struggling wildly, his body swaying from one side to the other, in the effort to free himself. The woman opened her eyes, then seeing the alligator swinging, closed her eyes again, shouting:
"Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!"
Bennet tried to lift her to her feet but she refused to rise. Repeating the request, "Kill it."
Bennet was still trying to sooth her when the chauffeur returned from the car with Bennet's revolver. Going close to the white glistening belly of the reptile, he aimed the revolver at a point just between the shoulders and fired twice. At the second shot the alligator's struggles diminished, a small stream of blood issuing from the wounds made by the bullets.
"Too bad. I wanted him alive," was all Bennet said as the chauffeur returned him the revolver. Gently the latter lifted the woman in his arms and bore her to the car, dispatching the chauffeur for some water from the stream they had crossed. Bennet moistened his handkerchief when the man returned and gently laved the woman's forehead. This soon revived her. At the opening of her eyes and returning memory, with a smothered scream she threw her arms about Bennet and began to cry.
She was soon soothed to calmness, however, by Bennet who convinced her that the reptile was dead. "Ugh!" she shuddered as calmness returned. "That's the first time I ever met one of the things on the road and I'll never come this road again.—I never knew them to come so far from the river before."
"They come out to lay their eggs," offered the chauffeur in explanation.
"Yes, so I've heard, but never met one before."
"You must have frightened him as much as he did you," smiled Bennet, reassuringly, as the woman clung to his hand. "Do you feel well enough to travel?" he asked solicitously. "If you do, I'll take you to your home and set you down."
"God bless you, and bring you a good wife," the old woman replied. "It's Sally Gorton that thanks you, Boy. Old Sally Gorton. I've been in these parts nigh onto sixty years now and everybody knows me.—I live just beyond here.—
"All right, Mrs. Gorton. I'll take you home."
"Thank 'e, Bub. But don't call me Mrs. Gorton. Ain't had no one call me that since my sparkin' days. Call me Aunt Sally. Everybody does. I like it. We're all neighbors in these parts and to them all I'm plain Aunt Sally. So call me that."
"All right, Aunt Sally," humoring her. "If you're Aunt Sally to all then you'll be Aunt Sally to me. Do you live far?"
The chauffeur had now taken his place at the wheel and Bennet stepped into the car. "Couple of miles ahead.—Used to live on Park Lauriston's place—lived there good many years but moved 'bout this time last year." Mrs. Gorton was now herself, confidence returning quickly as she sat by the good looking youth at her side and prattled away like a young girl, in her hospitable, open hearted southern way.
At the name Lauriston, Bennet's heart gave a wild throb sending the blood pulsing to his face.
"Ah, you know the Lauristons, then?" he asked trying to hide his confusion by making the question casual.
"Know them—know them. I know the whole kit and kaboodle of them. Known them since their bib and tucker days. Old Park Lauriston and I almost grew up together. Say I do know them!" Then turning to look shrewdly at the young man at her side, she asked: "You ain't coming courting, are you? If you are you might's well go back. Park Lauriston ain't going to let nobody but John Marley marry his Lida."
Bennet's face flushed more as the woman continued. "No sir. That's all settled. They're two proud families and the old men have fixed it up so's Lida and young John can hit it off together."
"What's the matter? Won't they let the young lady choose for herself?"
"Not much, they won't. Seems Lida went North last year and got herself mixed up in some scandal and now they're all against the girl. She's practically a prisoner till she makes up her mind to marry Young John. They're a cursed lot, with all their pride."
"What do you mean?" Bennet bristled defensively, surprised out of his determination not to make known his errand. "I chanced to meet the young woman, in the North and found her to be exceedingly ladylike."
"Going to call, are you?" Mrs. Gorton asked.
"That was my plan. I chance to be passing through, and knowing that she lived in this vicinity thought I'd call."
"Well, you won't be welcomed. I know.—Park Lauriston's too proud to let any strangers call on his child. Besides, I tell you they've fixed it up for Young John to marry her."
"I thought they didn't do those things here in the South. Thought they allowed the girl to choose," Bennet commented.
"Huh, you don't know the Lauristons. Though they live in the country they're all pride—with nothing to pride over, either.—True they've got a lot of old names in their families. But they've got other things too, and one of them's Park Lauriston."
"Evidently you don't like the family," Bennet remarked drily.
"Why should I? Didn't Park Lauriston throw me off his land last year? Me, an old woman, who'd befriended his family and nursed his children after their mother died and cared for them? No, I put a curse on the family. Let Lida marry Young John Marley. When they're married I'll tell them a thing or two that'll curse them all. The whole brood."
The car was gliding along quietly and came to a clearing off the road at the back of which nestled a small house from whose chimney arose smoke suggesting that the evening meal was in process.
"That's my house," Mrs. Gorton indicated.
They turned into the roadway leading up to it and drove up to the little garden patch with its path leading to the door behind a lattice covered with roses. The sun was setting in a large red ball through the trees, while far off to the east, over the woods darkness began to creep up the sky. There was a sound of cutting wood in the distance, with a rich voice yodling an evening tune in tempo with each axe-blow, as the echoes carried both from forest patch to forest patch across the cotton fields.
"Better come in and eat with us. Not much of a table but what I have you're welcome to. Besides, you can't get to Barnwell tonight, if that's where you're going," invited Mrs. Gorton.
Bennet gazed at the cosy inviting little cottage behind the rose trellis and debated whether to go on to Lida's home as was his intention or to accept the invitation and remain with this old woman's family. He thought of what the woman had told him about the Lauristons and concluded that perhaps in the circumstances it might be embarrassing for Lida. He decided to delay the visit till the morrow.
"Thank you, if it won't put you to bother," he responded. "I was not going to Barnwell, however. Are you fully recovered now?" he asked.
"My, yes. I've lived too long out among animals to let a thing like that disturb me for long. I'm not city bred like your women. I'm no doll," she answered in manifest pride in her vigor.
With that she stepped from the automobile and led the way to the little house. Summer twilight in the south is one of the most bewitching periods of the day and season; a time for romance and dreams and castle building. Bennet stood in the gateway also trellised over with rose bushes and looked toward the western sky. Dews were beginning to fall after the sun dropped behind the trees. From as far as the eye could see on one hand there seemed to be an unending forest, with tall long leaf pines standing out in silhouette, towering like giants over the remaining world of vegetation. Below them, far below, were the oak and other trees whose leaves were reddening. Across the cleared land in the rear of the house, the tops of the pines and oaks were still red and golden green where the sun's rays glinted from them. Long yellowish rays of sunbeams reached far up into the sky, like some monster searchlights at play with the world. From far over the fields came the chattering of sparrows at their angelus service. Off in a copse of woods a mocking bird was rendering an evening concert with a robin accompaniment. Gradually from the farm houses that dotted the horizon at varying distances there arose straight into the sky from their single chimneys, climbing into the air, towering, ambitious pillars of smoke. From a farm house could be heard the bleat of a sheep answered by the hunger call of a calf or the deep bay of a bloodhound in the distance. Bennet was entranced.
"What a wonderful place!" he exclaimed enthusiastically.
"It is right smart country," answered Mrs. Gorton as she watched the expression of admiration grow. "If you stay here long, you'll never leave," she added.
"I don't wonder they sing of the 'sunny south,'" exclaimed Bennet. "It is a delightful country."
"Yes, we're famous for beauty. Pretty horses, pretty women."
"A land to be enchanted in! A land of beauty!" Bennet was still under the spell.
"It is enchanted—and a princess over there—(nodding in the general direction of the Lauriston's lands) is waiting to be claimed by some prince and freed from her ogre of a father," commented Mrs. Gorton.
"I thought you didn't like the Lauristons," observed Bennet.
"I don't like Park. He did me wrong. But I've nothing against the girl. She's like her mother. The boy's like his father. They're making it a hell for that poor child now, just because she cast eyes over the Lauriston fence at some strange boy in the North."
"Is that true.—Do you know it to be true?" Bennet asked.
"I'm not sure. But what other thing could a poor girl be mixed up in that would make her father pen her up like a jailbird?" the woman asked.
"Oh, that can't be! That can't be," Bennet offered, his heart pained at the thought that Lida was perhaps suffering for him.
"Yes, it is. That Young John Marley is there all the time and the poor girl can't go anywhere without either Ellie Lauriston or he trailing after her."
Bennet's heart was agonized at the thought of what must be going on and how Lida must be suffering. He was glad now that he did not continue his journey to the house. He determined, however, to visit in the morning and if Lida was still suffering on his account and if her love had not lessened to take her away immediately.