PIEDMONT, South Carolina, which Elsie and Phil had selected for reasons best known to themselves as the place of retreat for their father, was a favourite summer resort of Charleston people before the war.
Ulster county, of which this village was the capital, bordered on the North Carolina line, lying alongside the ancient shire of York. It was settled by the Scotch folk who came from the North of Ireland in the great migrations which gave America three hundred thousand people of Covenanter martyr blood, the largest and most important addition to our population, larger in numbers than either the Puritans of New England or the so-called Cavaliers of Virginia and Eastern Carolina; and far more important than either, in the growth of American nationality.
To a man they had hated Great Britain. Not a Tory was found among them. The cries of their martyred dead were still ringing in their souls when George III. started on his career of oppression. The fiery words of Patrick Henry, their spokesman in the valley of Virginia, had swept the aristocracy of the Old Dominion into rebellion against the King and on into triumphant Democracy. They had made North Carolina the first home of freedom in the New World, issued the first Declaration of Independence in Mecklenburg, and lifted the first banner of rebellion against the tyranny of the Crown.
They grew to the soil wherever they stopped, always home-lovers and home-builders, loyal to their own people, instinctive clan leaders and clan followers. A sturdy, honest, covenant-keeping, God-fearing, fighting people, above all things they hated sham and pretence. They never boasted of their families, though some of them might have quartered the royal arms of Scotland on their shields.
To these sturdy qualities had been added a strain of Huguenot tenderness and vivacity.
The culture of cotton as the sole industry had fixed African slavery as their economic system. With the heritage of the Old World had been blended forces inherent in the earth and air of the new Southland, something of the breath of its unbroken forests, the freedom of its untrod mountains, the temper of its sun, and the sweetness of its tropic perfumes.
When Mrs. Cameron received Elsie's letter, asking her to secure for them six good rooms at the "Palmetto" hotel, she laughed. The big rambling hostelry had been burned by roving negroes, pigs were wallowing in the sulphur springs, and along its walks, where lovers of olden days had strolled, the cows were browsing on the shrubbery.
But she laughed for a more important reason. They had asked for a six-room cottage if accommodations could not be had in the hotel.
She could put them in the Lenoir place. The cotton crop from their farm had been stolen from the gin—the cotton tax of $200 could not be paid, and a mortgage was about to be foreclosed on both their farm and home. She had been brooding over their troubles in despair. The Stonemans' coming was a godsend.
Mrs. Cameron was helping them set the house in order to receive the new tenants.
"I declare," said Mrs. Lenoir, gratefully. "It seems too good to be true. Just as I was about to give up—the first time in my life—here came those rich Yankees and with enough rent to pay the interest on the mortgages and our board at the hotel. I'll teach Margaret to paint, and she can give Marion lessons on the piano. The darkest hour's just before day. And last week I cried when they told me I must lose the farm."
"I was heart-sick over it for you."
"You know, the farm was my dowry with the dozen slaves Papa gave us on our wedding-day. The negroes did as they pleased, yet we managed to live and were very happy."
Marion entered and placed a bouquet of roses on the table, touching them daintily until they stood each flower apart in careless splendour. Their perfume, the girl's wistful dreamy blue eyes and shy elusive beauty, all seemed a part of the warm sweet air of the June morning. Mrs. Lenoir watched her lovingly.
"Mama, I'm going to put flowers in every room. I'm sure they haven't such lovely ones in Washington," said Marion, eagerly, as she skipped out.
The two women moved to the open window, through which came the drone of bees and the distant music of the river falls.
"Marion's greatest charm," whispered her mother, "is in her way of doing things easily and gently without a trace of effort. Watch her bend over to get that rose. Did you ever see anything like the grace and symmetry of her figure—she seems a living flower!"
"Jeannie, you're making an idol of her"
"Why not? With all our troubles and poverty, I'm rich in her! She's fifteen years old, her head teeming with romance. You know, I was married at fifteen. There'll be a half-dozen boys to see her to-night in our new home—all of them head over heels in love with her."
"Oh, Jeannie, you must not be so silly! We should worship God only."
"Isn't she God's message to me, and to the world?"
"But if anything should happen to her"
The young mother laughed. "I never think of it. Some things are fixed. Her happiness and beauty are to me the sign of God's presence."
"Well, I'm glad you're coming to live with us in the heart of town. This place is a cosey nest, just such a one or as a poet-lover would build here in the edge of these deep woods, but it is too far out for you to be alone. Dr. Cameron has been worrying about you ever since he came home."
"I'm not afraid of the negroes. I don't know one of them who wouldn't go out of his way to do me a favour. Old Aleck is the only rascal I know among them, and he's too busy with politics now even to steal a chicken."
"And Gus, the young scamp we used to own; you haven't forgotten him? He is back here, a member of the company of negro troops, and parades before the house every day to show off his uniform. Dr. Cameron told him yesterday he'd thrash him if he caught him hanging around the place again. He frightened Margaret nearly to death when she went to the barn to feed her horse."
"I've never known the meaning of fear. We used to roam the woods and fields together all hours of the day and night, my lover, Marion and I. This panic seems absurd to me."
"Well, I'll be glad to get you two children under my wing. I was afraid I'd find you in tears over moving from your nest."
"No, where Marion is, I'm at home, and I'll feel I've a mother when I get with you."
"Will you come to the hotel before they arrive?"
"No; I'll welcome and tell them how glad I am they have brought me good luck."
"I'm delighted, Jeannie. I wished you to do this, but I couldn't ask it. I can never do enough for this old man's daughter. We must make their stay happy. They say he's a terrible old Radical politician, but I suppose he's no meaner than the others. He's very ill, and she loves him devotedly. He is coming here to find health, and not to insult us. Besides, he was kind to me. He wrote a letter to the President. Nothing that I have will be too good for him or for his. It's very brave and sweet of you to stay and meet them."
"I'm doing it to please Marion. She suggested it last night, sitting out on the porch in the twilight. She slipped her arm around me and said:
"'Mama, we must welcome them, and make them feel at home. He is very ill. They will be tired and homesick. Suppose it were you and I, and we were taking my Papa to a strange place.'" ······· When the Stonemans arrived, the old man was too ill and nervous from the fatigue of the long journey to notice his surroundings or to be conscious of the restful beauty of the cottage into which they carried him. His room looked out over the valley of the river for miles, and the glimpse he got of its broad fertile acres only confirmed his ideas of the "slaveholding oligarchy" it was his life-purpose to crush. Over the mantel hung a steel engraving of Calhoun. He fell asleep with his deep, sunken eyes resting on it and a cynical smile playing about his grim mouth.
Margaret and Mrs. Cameron had met the Stonemans and their physician at the train, and taken Elsie and her father in the old weather-beaten family carriage to the Lenoir cottage, apologising for Ben's absence.
"He has gone to Nashville on some important legal business, and the doctor is ailing, but as the head of the clan Cameron he told me to welcome your father to the hospitality of the county, and beg him to let us know if he could be of help."
The old man, who sat in a stupor of exhaustion, made no response, and Elsie hastened to say:
"We appreciate your kindness more than I can tell you, Mrs. Cameron. I trust father will be better in a day or two, when he will thank you. The trip has been more than he could bear."
"I am expecting Ben home this week," the mother whispered. "I need not tell you that he will be delighted at your coming."
Elsie smiled and blushed.
"And I'll expect Captain Stoneman to see me very soon," said Margaret, softly. "You will not forget to tell him for me?"
"He's a very retiring young man," said Elsie, "and pretends to be busy about our baggage just now. I'm sure he will find the way."
Elsie fell in love at sight with Marion and her mother. Their easy genial manners, the genuineness of their welcome, and the simple kindness with which they sought to make her feel at home put her heart into a warm glow.
Mrs. Lenoir explained the conveniences of the place and apologised for its defects, the results of the war.
"I am sorry about the window-curtains—we have used them all for dresses. Marion is a genius with a needle, and we took the last pair out of the parlour to make a dress for a birthday party. The year before, we used the ones in my room for a costume at a starvation party in a benefit for our rector—you know we're Episcopalians—strayed up here for our health from Charleston among these good Scotch Presbyterians."
"We will soon place curtains at the windows," said Elsie, cheerfully.
"The carpets were sent to the soldiers for blankets during the war. It was all we could do for our poor boys except to cut my hair and sell it. You see my hair hasn't grown out yet. I sent it to Richmond the last year of the war. I felt I must do something, when my neighbours were giving so much. You know Mrs. Cameron lost four boys."
"I prefer the floors bare," Elsie replied. "We will get a few rugs."
She looked at the girlish hair hanging in ringlets about Mrs. Lenoir's handsome face, smiled pathetically, and asked:
"Did you really make such sacrifices for your cause?"
"Yes, indeed. I was glad when the war was ended for some things. We certainly needed a few pins, needles and buttons, to say nothing of a cup of coffee or tea."
"I trust you will never lack for anything again," said Elsie, kindly.
"You will bring us good luck," Mrs. Lenoir responded. "Your coming is so fortunate. The cotton tax Congress levied was so heavy this year, we were going to lose everything. Such a tax when we are all about to starve Dr. Cameron says it was an act of stupid vengeance on the South, and that no other farmers in America have their crops taxed by the National Government. I am so glad your father has come. He is not hunting for an office. He can help us, maybe."
"I am sure he will," answered Elsie, thoughtfully.
Marion ran up the steps, lightly, her hair dishevelled and face flushed.
"Now, Mama, it's almost sundown; you get ready to go. I want her awhile to show her about my things."
She took Elsie shyly by the hand and led her into the lawn, while her mother paid a visit to each room, and made up the last bundle of odds and ends she meant to carry to the hotel.
"I hope you will love the place as we do," said the girl, simply.
"I think it very beautiful and restful," Elsie replied. "This wilderness of flowers looks like fairyland. You have roses running on the porch around the whole length of the house."
"Yes, Papa was crazy over the trailing roses, and kept planting them until the house seems just a frame built to hold them, with a roof on it. But you can see the river through the arches from three sides. Ben Cameron helped me set that big beauty on the south corner the day he ran away to the war"
"The view is glorious!" Elsie exclaimed, looking in rapture over the river valley.
The village of Piedmont crowned an immense hill on the banks of the Broad River, just where it dashes over the last stone barrier in a series of beautiful falls and spreads out in peaceful glory through the plains toward Columbia and the distant sea. The muffled roar of these falls, rising softly through the trees on its wooded cliff, held the daily life of the people in the spell of distant music. In fair weather it soothed and charmed, and in storm and freshet rose to the deep solemn growl of thunder.
The river made a sharp bend as it emerged from the hills and flowed westward for six miles before it turned south again. Beyond this six-mile sweep of its broad channel loomed the three ranges of the Blue Ridge mountains, the first one dark, rich, distinct, clothed in eternal green, the last one melting in dim lines into the clouds and soft azure of the sky.
As the sun began to sink now behind these distant peaks, each cloud that hung about them burst into a blazing riot of colour. The silver mirror of the river caught their shadows, and the water glowed in sympathy.
As Elsie drank the beauty of the scene, the music of the falls ringing its soft accompaniment, her heart went out in a throb of love and pity for the land and its people.
"Can you blame us for loving such a spot?" said Marion. "It's far more beautiful from the cliff at Lover's Leap. I'll take you there some day. My father used to tell me that this world was Heaven, and that the spirits would all come back to live here when sin and shame and strife were gone."
"Are your father's poems published?" asked Elsie.
"Only in the papers. We have them clipped and pasted in a scrap-book. I'll show you the one about Ben Cameron some day. You met him in Washington, didn't you?"
"Yes," said Elsie, quietly.
"Then I know he made love to you."
"Why?"
"You're so pretty. He couldn't help it."
"Does he make love to every pretty girl?"
"Always. It's his religion. But he does it so beautifully you can't help believing it, until you compare notes with the other girls."
"Did he make love to you?"
"He broke my heart when he ran away. I cried a whole week. But I got over it. He seemed so big and grown when he came home this last time. I was afraid to let him kiss me."
"Did he dare to try?"
"No, and it hurt my feelings. You see, I'm not quite old enough to be serious with the big boys, and he looked so brave and handsome with that ugly scar on the edge of his forehead, and everybody was so proud of him. I was just dying to kiss him, and I thought it downright mean in him not to offer it."
"Would you have let him?"
"I expected him to try."
"He is very popular in Piedmont?"
"Every girl in town is in love with him."
"And he in love with all?"
"He pretends to be—but between us, he's a great flirt. He's gone to Nashville now on some pretended business. Goodness only knows where he got the money to go. I believe there's a girl there."
"Why?"
"Because he was so mysterious about his trip. I'll keep an eye on him at the hotel. You know Margaret, too, don't you?"
"Yes; we met her in Washington."
"Well, she's the slyest flirt in town—it runs in the blood—has a half-dozen beaux to see her every day. She plays the organ in the Presbyterian Sunday school, and the young minister is dead in love with her. They say they are engaged. I don't believe it. I think it's another one. But I must hurry, I've so much to show and tell you. Come here to the honeysuckle"
Marion drew the vines apart from the top of the fence and revealed a mocking-bird on her nest.
"She's setting. Don't let anything hurt her. I'd push her off and show you her speckled eggs, but it's so late."
"Oh, I wouldn't hurt her for the world!" cried Elsie with delight.
"And right here," said Marion, bending gracefully over a tall hunch of grass, "is a pee-wee's nest, four darling little eggs; look out for that."
Elsie bent and saw the pretty nest perched on stems of grass, and, over it, the taller leaves drawn to a point.
"Isn't it cute!" she murmured.
"Yes; I've six of these and three mocking-bird nests. I'll show them to you. But the most particular one of all is the wren's nest in the fork of the cedar, close to the house."
She led Elsie to the tree, and about two feet from the ground, in the forks of the trunk, was a tiny hole from which peeped the eyes of a wren.
"Whatever you do, don't let anything hurt her. Her mate sings 'Free-nigger! Free-nigger! Free-nigger!' every morning in this cedar."
"And you think we will specially enjoy that?" asked Elsie, laughing.
"Now, really," cried Marion, taking Elsie's hand, "you know I couldn't think of such a mean joke. I forgot you were from the North. You seem so sweet and homelike. He really does sing that way. You will hear him in the morning, bright and early, 'Free-nigger! Free-nigger! Free-nigger!' just as plain as I'm saying it."
"And did you learn to find all these birds' nests by yourself?"
"Papa taught me. I've got some jay-birds and some cat-birds so gentle they hop right down at my feet. Some people hate jay-birds. But I like them, they seem to be having such a fine time and enjoy life so. You don't mind jay-birds, do you?"
"I love every bird that flies."
"Except hawks and owls and buzzards"
"Well, I've seen so few I can't say I've anything particular against them."
"Yes, they eat chickens—except the buzzards, and they're so ugly and filthy. Now, I've a chicken to show you—please don't let Aunt Cindy—she's to be your cook—please don't let her kill him—he's crippled—has something the matter with his foot. He was born that way. Everybody wanted to kill him, but I wouldn't let them. I've had an awful time raising him, but he's all right now."
Marion lifted a box and showed her the lame pet, softly clucking his protest against the disturbance of his rest.
"I'll take good care of him, never fear," said Elsie, with a tremor in her voice.
"And I have a queer little black cat I wanted to show you, but he's gone off somewhere. I'd take him with me—only it's bad luck to move cats. He's awful wild—won't let anybody pet him but me. Mama says he's an imp of Satan—but I love him. He runs up a tree when anybody else tries to get him. But he climbs right up on my shoulder. I never loved any cat quite as well as this silly, half-wild one. You don't mind black cats, do you?"
"No, dear; I like cats."
"Then I know you'll be good to him."
"Is that all?" asked Elsie, with amused interest.
"No, I've the funniest yellow dog that comes here at night to pick up the scraps and things. He isn't my dog—just a little personal friend of mine—but I like him very much, and always give him something. He's very cute. I think he's a nigger dog."
"A nigger dog? What's that?"
"He belongs to some coloured people, who don't give him enough to eat. I love him because he's so faithful to his own folks. He comes to see me at night and pretends to love me, but as soon as I feed him he trots back home. When he first came, I laughed till I cried at his antics over a carpet—we had a carpet then. He never saw one before, and barked at the colours and the figures in the pattern. Then he'd lie down and rub his back on it and growl. You won't let anybody hurt him?"
"No. Are there any others?"
"Yes, I 'most forgot. If Sam Ross comes—Sam's an idiot who lives at the poorhouse—if he comes, he'll expect a dinner—my, my, I'm afraid he'll cry when he finds we're not here! But you can send him to the hotel to me. Don't let Aunt Cindy speak rough to him. Aunt Cindy's awfully good to me, but she can't bear Sam. She thinks he brings bad luck."
"How on earth did you meet him?"
"His father was rich. He was a good friend of my Papa's. We came near losing our farm once, because a bank failed. Mr. Ross sent Papa a signed check on his own bank, and told him to write the amount he needed on it, and pay him when he was able. Papa cried over it, and wouldn't use it, and wrote a poem on the back of he check—one of the sweetest of all, I think. In the war Mr. Ross lost his two younger sons, both killed at Gettysburg. His wife died heart-broken, and he only lived a year afterward. He sold his farm for Confederate money, and everything was lost. Sam was sent to the poorhouse. He found out somehow that we loved him and comes to see us. He's as harmless as a kitten, and works the garden beautifully."
"I'll remember," Elsie promised.
"And one thing more," she said, hesitatingly. "Mama asked me to speak to you of this—that's why she slipped away. There's one little room we have locked. It was Papa's study just as he left it, with his papers scattered on the desk, the books and pictures that he loved—you won't mind?"
Elsie slipped her arm about Marion, looked into the blue eyes, dim with tears, drew her close, and said:
"It shall be sacred, my child. You must come every day if possible, and help me."
"I will. I've so many beautiful places to show you in the woods—places he loved, and taught us to see and love. They won't let me go in the woods any more alone. But you have a big brother. That must be very sweet."
Mrs. Lenoir hurried to Elsie.
"Come, Marion, we must be going now."
"I am very sorry to see you leave the home you love so dearly, Mrs. Lenoir," said the Northern girl, taking her extended hand. "I hope you can soon find a way to have it back."
"Thank you," replied the mother, cheerily. "The longer you stay, the better for us. You don't know how happy I am over your coming. It has lifted a load from our hearts. In the liberal rent you pay us you are our benefactors. We are very grateful and happy."
Elsie watched them walk across the lawn to the street, the daughter leaning on the mother's arm. She followed slowly and stopped behind one of the arbor-vitæ bushes beside the gate. The full moon had risen as the twilight fell and flooded the scene with soft white light. A whippoorwill struck his first plaintive note, his weird song seeming to come from all directions and yet to be under her feet. She heard the rustle of dresses returning along the walk, and Marion and her mother stood at the gate. They looked long and tenderly at the house. Mrs. Lenoir uttered a broken sob, Marion slipped an arm around her, brushed the short curling hair back from her forehead, and softly said:
"Mama, dear, you know it's best. I don't mind. Everybody in town loves us. Every boy and girl in Piedmont worships you. We will be just as happy at the hotel."
In the pauses between the strange bird's cry, Elsie caught the sound of another sob, and then a soothing murmur as of a mother bending over a cradle, and they were gone.