I could stand it no longer, but rose from the table and walked from the room, not, however, before hearing Lulie say:
“I don’t quite agree with you, Col. Smith. I can’t bear a slow courting fellow. If he loves much it won’t take him long to tell it. There! you have run John off. I like him ever so much, only he is very timid.”
I went out and sat on the stoop in no pleasant frame of mind. I was provoked with father for teasing me; I was provoked with myself for being teased, and I was provoked with Lulie for not being teased.
“She cannot love me or she would not treat the matter so lightly,” I soliloquized, grinding white circles on the brown stone with my boot heel. “She thinks me timid, too; I’ll prove my boldness the first opportunity I get.”
Father and Lulie now came out and sat down, but no further allusion was made to the dining room topic. We spoke of our intended trip to the plantation near Goldsboro’, and Lulie agreed, if her pa was willing, to go up and spend the remainder of the summer with us, as it would be very pleasant for her to be with Carlotta. After talking for some time of the pleasures of the country, Lulie rose to go, and I, of course, accompanied her.
So far from proving my boldness I walked by her side in awkward silence till she spoke.
“Why did you let your father tease you so to-night, Johnnie?”
“He didn’t tease me,” I returned, with Munchausen mendacity. “I didn’t care a straw for what he said, only I did not choose to be spoken of so before a lady.”
“I’ll wager Frank Paning would not have been disconcerted,” she said. “He has more self-possession than any one I ever saw.”
“I don’t care what in the thunder Frank Paning has; I don’t want to be like him,” I said, savagely.
“I did not intend to offend you, sir; I am obliged to you for your escort thus far, but, since you are so incensed, will need your services no farther,” she said, very quietly, taking her hand from my arm.
“I beg a thousand pardons, Lulie; I was rude and hasty, but so many constant allusions to Paning irritate me beyond measure. He must be very dear to you from the repeated mention of his name.”
“Oh, no, that does not follow at all. I think very well of him, as he is attentive and kind; but here we are at our gate; won’t you come in?”
“Thanks! not to-night. Let me ask pardon again, Lulie, for my very harsh words on the way.”
“Do not mention it; ‘tis forgotten with me. Good night!”
My feelings, as I walked homeward, were very much mingled. There was always pleasure and pain in being with Lulie. Young as she was she already possessed consummate skill in swaying the feelings – now by some bewitching word or look raising your hopes, then dashing them to earth by some sarcasm, or worse, an allusion to some other favorite. She had reduced her game to a science, and always pitted special rivals against each other. Frank was sure to be my thorn. A single remark, evincing a preference for him, was enough to disturb my equanimity for an evening. So, in my thoughts this evening there was pain, yet a sweet pleasure, too, in the reflection that, in our retired country seat up in Wayne, I would have her all to myself; that I could see her every day, and talk as long and freely as I chose, with all the adjuncts and concomitants of love – woods, birds, brooks, bowers, meadows and moonshine.
Just as I reached our gate I met Frank Paning himself, hurrying up street to his home.
“Hello, John!” he said, lightly, as we stopped, “where have you been? Over to the Doc’s, I suppose. I am getting jealous. Lulie must be looked to.”
“There is no danger,” I replied; “you are certainly the idol there.”
“Oh, you tell me that to blind me, but I know a thing or two. By the way, how is our little foundling. I heard to-day that your folks had brought her here to raise up as a wife for you. I suppose you wish to train her up to suit you, so she will not have to learn your ways after marriage.”
“You heard a most infamous falsehood, then, and you can tell your informant I said so,” I replied, the blood rushing to my face.
“Well, don’t get mad about it; I was only joking. I want to call on her; when will she receive company?”
“Not in a year or two,” I said, emphatically. “She is going up the country next week, and will not return till the fall, when she will commence school, and be closely occupied with her studies.”
“I see it is plain you fear rivals. I will not trouble you.”
Before I could reply he was gone.
CHAPTER X
The morning is misty and damp, as father, mother, Carlotta, Lulie and I stand under the great shed at the dépôt, waiting for the car doors to be unlocked. It is very early, and nobody seems stirring except those immediately connected with the train about to start. There are a dozen or more people standing in groups, waiting on the same event as ourselves. They all yawn a great deal, rub their eyes, wish they were back in bed, and wonder how long before the brakesman comes to open the car doors. The train itself lies on the track like a great headless serpent (for the engine has not yet been put on), whose red and yellow sides are full of latticed eyes. At last the brakesman, in a blue coat, striped shirt and glazed cap, comes along, whistling the last popular ballad, unlocks the door with a rattle, and shouts “Walk in, ladies and gentlemen.”
We crowd in and select our seats on the side from the sun, if it should come out. Father turns over the seat in front, that it may face the other one, lays his shawl in the corner, hangs up the basket containing our lunch, sits down, pulls off his glove with his teeth, thrusts his hand under his duster, draws out and looks at his watch, shuts it with a snap, and says indistinctly, through the fingers of his glove:
“It will be fifteen minutes before we start.”
People continue to arrive and crowd in, singly and in parties. The individuals consist of a very fat old gentleman, with a broad hat soiled around the band, a duster too short by six inches for his long black coat, and a large red bandanna handkerchief, worn altogether in his hand; a fancy dressed young gentleman, who looks in the door a moment and concludes to finish his cigar upon the platform, with one foot lifted to the railing, where he can tap the heel of his boot with a leg-headed cane; a rather rough man with a very large moustache, who passes through the coach very often and slams the door very hard, gets between two seats to lean half way out of the window to tell some one, who is named Bill, “Hello!” and to ask “when will you be up?” lets down the window with a bang, and lolls across the seat with one foot hanging in the aisle; a middle aged maiden lady, dressed, of course, in black bombazine, with a green veil, a large basket with a scolloped top, a canary of yellow and black dignity in a white and green cage, furnished with seed, sand, and inconvenient water cups; an old lady under the care of the conductor, walking very slow, with a horn handled stick, a large flowered bandbox and a white cloth bag; she wears a dark fly bonnet, which she takes off when she sits down and displays a white cap, ruffled around her face, which is very much wrinkled, and has white, thin hairs about the chin; she shows a disposition to breathe hard, and to look around vacantly from the side seat at the end of the cars, where the conductor has placed her, and to talk to no one in particular with a voice like a cat-bird’s with a bad cold.
The parties who enter are generally composed of tall, resigned looking gentlemen, burdened with innumerable boxes and bundles, patient and pale wives, in gray travelling dresses and lead colored veils, which they hold in one corner of their mouths, to show only one fourth of the face: sleepy looking, large boys, with badly fitting clothes, who stumble along the aisle behind their parents, as if they were still dreaming; smaller boys and girls following, holding each other by the hand, each in the fallacious belief that they are taking care of the other; and mulatto nurses, carrying in their arms very white headed babies, naturally lachrymose and nasally aqueous.
Having seen all these and many more come in, I raise the window. Everything is dripping with fog, and the moisture is trickling in little crooked streams down the sides of the coaches. The express wagon comes rattling down, and I can hear them unloading, with an occasional ejaculation bordering on the profane. Then I hear the bell of the engine as it comes out of the yard, and stews and hisses, backing down the track, nearer and nearer till it touches – then, with a loud clack-up of the coaches, everybody is jerked forward, the train glides back a foot or two, and it is coupled on. All is comparatively still now, and there is nothing to remind us of the immense power to which we are attached, except the odor of the smoke, which is rolling in black masses along the roof of the shed, and the faint singing of the steam.
I take my head in and find everybody either dozing or staring stupidly out of the window. Father is reclining in his seat, mother is resting her cheek upon her hand, with closed eyes, and Carlotta and Lulie, finding it too damp to raise the window, have looked through the glass till their breath has dimmed it, and wiping it with their hands, have left the print of their fingers in circles on the pane.
William now brings father the checks for the baggage, the whistle sounds, the bell rings, a few loud coughs from the great monster that draws us, and we glide from under the roof, creep under the bridge, jog along the suburbs, rattle into full speed, and roar out of sight of the town; the last sign of which is a little negro, standing in the door of a hut on the embankment above, waving his rag of a hat, as if to wish us good speed. Trees fly by, fences like long serpents wriggle past, and the whole country becomes a passing panorama!
The sun rises, and, dispelling the fog, shines out bright and sultry. People, aroused by the stir, begin to talk. Children become thirsty. The lady opposite, with two little girls and a baby, tells the nurse to hand her the basket, and opening it to get out the silver mug, sends the nurse after water. The nurse totters down the coach, rocks backward and forward while drawing the water, and totters back, steadying herself by the arms of the seats, and spilling a little water at every step. The little camels gulp it down as if the cars were Sahara!
The conductor staggers in and calls for tickets. Old gentlemen untie many-stringed pocket-books, old ladies open their reticules, and young gentlemen point to their hat bands. He passes out, and the whistle sounds. The brakes-man rushes to the wheel and gives a turn, then holds his cap on with one hand, and swings off by the railing to look ahead. Another whistle, another turn, and we grind into a small station, where we stop for a minute or two; then on and on we fly, faster for the short delay. The morning wears away, and we get out our luncheon. Broiled chicken and cold tongue! how they are associated with travelling! Their very odor is suggestive of the rattle of the train! We had scarce finished eating when the whistle sounded for Goldsboro’. We got off and found Aleck, one of the farm hands, waiting for us with the spring wagon, as Horace, he said, had not yet got up with the carriage. We all clambered up, and were soon rolling over a level, though dusty, road to our country place.
As the rattling wagon was not a very pleasant place for conversation, I had leisure to observe Carlotta, and to mark the effects of diversion on her beautiful face. Many traces of sadness were gone, and there was even brightness in her eyes. Such eyes I have never seen. There was a velvet expression about them, for to the soft rich effect of that fabric alone can I compare those orbs and their setting; and I thought, as I gazed at them, that the soul must be a rare one indeed that possessed such windows. She seemed trying to shake off reflections on her own misfortunes, and for others’ sake, if not her own, to be cheerful. She sat next to mother, to whom she was already fondly attached, and whose tender heart fully reciprocated her love. Lulie was all gaiety, and father was undignified enough to be droll; some of his remarks even drawing a smile from Carlotta, though only such a smile a soul in serge can wear; a smile that seems begun in forgetfulness, and finished with repentance for its levity.
The afternoon was far advanced when we drove up the long avenue of trees that led to the house.
The place had been built by my great grandfather, and the house and all the premises were on the old style.
The great-house, as it was termed by the negroes, was a large two-story one, with narrow green blinds, a large wing extending back, and piazzas running almost all the way round. The chimneys were very broad, and were built half up with rock, then finished off with brick. The front porch had an arched roof over it, and was furnished with two stiff benches on each side. There was a magnificent grove in front, in one corner of which was a large pond or lake, on which a flock of geese were swimming. To the left of the house stood a large capacious kitchen, painted red, and behind and around the house were ranged the dairy, smoke house, &c., all of the same ruddy hue. Back of the yard were the long rows of negro cabins, with their martin poles, and little gardens in front of them, and a few hundred yards off, in a small growth of trees, stood the house for the overseer, Mr. Bemby. As we drove up to the yard gate a large bull-dog, chained in his kennel, commenced barking furiously, and this brought yelping around the house half a dozen curs and hounds belonging to the negroes. These were followed in turn by a troop of little negroes, who ran to the gate, shouting in great glee:
“Yon’s marster and mistis.”
Then ensued a scuffle for the honor of opening the gate, and a shrill chorus of “How dye’s” as we entered the yard. Mrs. Bemby came down the steps to meet us, and took us into the cool, large front room, where she aided mother and the girls to take off their bonnets and hats, then conducted them to their chambers. She soon returned to father and myself, with waiter and goblets of ice water.
“Col. Smith,” she said, as she placed the water on the table, “Mrs. Smith said you’ve got her keys; and, Mister John, your room is ready whenever you wish to go up.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Bemby,” I replied, as father arose and went to mother’s chamber, “I will wait here awhile, as it is the coolest place I have seen to-day.” “I must go see about supper,” she said, taking up the key basket and holding it against herself while she searched for a key; “don’t, the niggers will get every thing wrong. I ‘spected to move over to-day to our house, but Mr. Bemby, he was so busy a plowing, I couldn’t get all the things away; so, if you find any of Ben’s things in your room, let ’em stay till in the morning. It ingenerly takes me a fortnit to get straight when I come from home to the great’us, or from the great’us to home.”
I surveyed her and the room while she was speaking, and found her impress on every article. The room was always used as a sitting room, and had so many doors and windows that it was a perfect breeze generator. The chairs were ranged two and two under every window, as if to let the wind cool them. Father’s lounge was drawn in the middle of the room, with its bright chintz covering tucked in so tightly that it seemed to say to me, “Come and lie down, I will not let you sink in and be hot, but will bear you up, that you may get the breeze.” The floor was so clean and shining that I longed to get down and sleep with my face on the cool boards. Even the old fashioned piano, with its yellow keys and little straight legs, had such a tight, scant cover, that it seemed to have taken off its trousers for the summer. The broad fireplace was clayed as white as snow, and stuffed full of feathery fennel, and on the high, quaintly carved mantel, were plaster images, sheep with very red eyes, a studious boy with a slate, and his nose knocked off, and very erect Napoleon Bonaparte, with very large legs, one of which had grown to a stump, in a way that would have held him faster than St. Helena. Between these mementoes of itinerant Italians were ranged double rows of red and green apples, with Hardee precision. There were several old portraits in the room, and these had the gauze looped up around them, as if to give them air. A tall old clock, with a dignified face, and a lazy second-hand, that waited every time for the clock to tick before it would jump, stood in its corner – the long pendulum passing to and fro by the little glass door near the bottom, as if it didn’t care if I did see it, and would as lief stop as not. And then its drowsy tick! Argus would have closed all his eyes if he could have heard it for five minutes! A large yellow and white cat, with both ears cropped, lay asleep in Mrs. Bemby’s work basket, which sat near the door, and a frisky gray kitten on the hearth was catching at the flies in the fennel. And I thought, as I looked around, if Mrs. Bemby could impart such a cool, clean look to every thing by her short residence in the house, what must her little home be up on the hill, under those great shady poplars.
Mrs. B. having found her key, came to her work basket, shook the cat out of it (the cat coming down slowly on her fore feet, and bringing her hind feet down a second or two afterwards, as if half inclined to let them stay up in the air), and gathering up her work, left the room. I rose and went up stairs, where I found everything equally antique, and as clean and cool. I ordered up my trunk, and having made my toilet I went down, feeling very much refreshed. The girls soon appeared, and we spent the remainder of the afternoon exploring the old house. In the old parlor, in the library – with long high shelves of books – up in the old dusty garrets, down in the basement, everywhere that there was anything to show, I carried Carlotta and Lulie, listening to Lulie’s bright laugh and admiring Carlotta’s brightening beauty. From the house we walked out into the grove, down to the orchard, and, with our hats full of apples and peaches, at last took our seats on the green mossy rocks at the spring. As Lulie and Carlotta took their seats together, and seemed so absorbed in each other, I found that the first little cloud in this country trip was beginning to gather; that cloud was – and I blushed for shame at the thought – Carlotta’s presence. I knew that she and Lulie would be inseparable, when I wanted Lulie all to myself. I felt that I must give up all hopes of private chats; that I would have no opportunity to tell my love; that all my courtship must be carried on by looks, and that, I knew, would be unsatisfactory, as Lulie never returned my tender glances; yet I could not help admiring Carlotta, and loving to be with her. She was so exquisitely beautiful that I could sit and watch her for hours and never weary; but she was too sad and serious yet to be congenial, and I felt that she was a bar to my intercourse with Lulie, and could scarcely refrain from wishing we had never found her. All the better part of my nature would rise up indignantly at the unkindness of such thoughts, but still I would have them. Youth, in love, is excusable for many follies.
While the girls were talking in a low tone together I was leaning on my elbow, flipping the parings of the peaches into the water, and indulging a somewhat bitter train of reflection over my disappointment, when the tea bell rang. We hastened to the house, and met father at the door, who said:
“Come in to tea. Mrs. Bemby has not had time to prepare supper at her house, so I have invited her and Mr. Bemby, and Ben, their son, to eat with us to-night. Ben is rather a queer case, but you mustn’t laugh when you meet him, as it would hurt Mrs. Bemby’s feelings very much.”
We went down stairs to the dining room, where we were introduced to Mr. B. and son. Mr. Bemby was a large dark man, with a kind, pleasant face, but rough and sun-burnt in his appearance. He seemed very much at his ease, as he knew father and mother so well, and greeted us cordially, remarking to me, as he shook my hand:
“You’ve growed a’most outen my knowledge, Mr. Smith, but I hain’t seen you sence you was a mighty little chap.”
As soon as I looked at Ben I knew I had found a rare case, and I felt that he would contribute no small amount to my enjoyment. He was very tall and stout, being nearly six feet high, though he was apparently not done growing. He had a clear gray eye, full of intelligence, but that always looked as if it was laughing to itself; his nose was prominent between his eyes, but flattened at the end by an unskilful operation for hair-lip, when he was a child; his upper lip, from the same cause, had a deep scar in it, and was tucked in his under lip, as if he was sucking something from a spoon. When he laughed he showed only his under teeth, which were well set, but stained yellow from the use of tobacco; his laugh itself was a very singular one for a young person, though I have sometimes heard very old and sedate people laugh so. When he was amused his face assumed a broad grin two or three seconds before a sound was heard, and then from deep within came a series of short or long grunts, according to the intensity of his feelings; if he was very much amused the grunts were lengthened almost to groans – one beginning as the other left off; if he was only laughing slightly they were short enough to be a kind of chuckle. The best illustration of his laugh I can find is a thunder cloud – first the lightning on his face, after awhile the thunder rumbling up from within. Very often his face, in ordinary converse, would, like sheet lightning, flash out a laugh, while no sound at all would be heard.
Mother was suffering with headache from the day’s fatigue and sent in her excuse, and the request that Mrs. Bemby would take the head of the table, and make the tea and coffee. Mrs. B – accordingly took her seat, and while she is arranging the cups, let me introduce her more thoroughly by a brief description. A very stout old lady, with thin gray hairs, tucked into a small knot by a large horn comb, small blue eyes, with the under lid much nearer the pupil than the upper, giving her always a very pleasant but surprised look; a fat face, with scarcely a wrinkle, a loose under lip, and a tongue that threatened with every word to come out, so that all her words seemed to have been fattening before she spoke them. Her form was very large, so that she looked like a tierce of good nature. Her whole appearance was of that kind, that if you had seen her at the door of a house, as you were travelling, you would have stopped for refreshment, knowing that everything would be clean, and in that agreeable profusion that one always enjoys after a journey.
Mrs. Bemby was free and unembarrassed in her manner; Mr. Bemby unconcerned; but Ben evidently felt awkward, and was depending upon observation of the conduct of others for his table deportment.
“Colonel Smith,” said Mrs. B – to father, after grace had been said, “will you take some tea or coffee?”
“I’ll take a cup of each,” said he. “I am a little peculiar about that, and generally ice my tea while I drink my coffee.”
“If I had a’ known that I could a’ had some friz for you, sir.”
“No matter, Mrs. Bemby. I can soon cool it here.”
“Miss Lulie, which will you have?”
“I will thank you for a glass of milk.”
“Well, Miss Carlotta?”
“A cup of tea, if you please.”
“Mr. John, tea or coffee?”
“Coffee, I believe, madam.”
“Old man, you’ll have coffee, I know,” she said, putting the sugar in Mr. B – ‘s cup.
Poor Ben had been watching carefully, but could not possibly decide what was au fait under the circumstances, so that when his turn came he resolved, as the safest course, to follow father’s example, and, in response to his mother’s inquiry, replied that he would take some of both, and “sorter cool the tea while he was getting down the coffee.”
Mrs. Bemby’s eyes certainly looked natural in their surprise at his answer. Lulie, whose face had been red with restrained laughter since she had seen him, now broke into an irresistible titter, to which Ben replied by a grin, without a sound.
“Ben,” said his mother, still looking at him through her specs, “you must be a fool; give him some buttermilk, Harriet.”
There was silence for some time, and then father said:
“Ben, do you ever catch any fish, now?”
“Yes, sir; I ketched a cat ‘tother day, big as a bucket.”
“Caught a cat, eh,” said father, setting aside his coffee, and drawing the tea to him. “You must have baited with a mouse.”
“Nor, sir, I baited with a worrum. Cats bites at worrums fine.”
Lulie could restrain her curiosity no longer, but asked, with all earnestness, if it was a real cat, with tail, claws and all.
Ben gave a great many long grunts as he said, “Sho’, its got a tail, but tain’t got no claws, ‘cause its a fish.”
“Oh!” said Lulie, with her hand to her mouth, and a glance at me.
I ventured to ask if there were many squirrels on the plantation.
Ben bit a large semicircle out of a biscuit, and said through the crumbs:
“The trees is just a breakin’ with ’em. I went to a mulberry this mornin’, and th’was sixty odd on one limb!”
“Why, Ben,” said father, looking up, “that couldn’t have been so.”
“Well, they mightn’t a’ been; but three hundred and over ran outen the tree when I shot.”
Ben is not the only one I have met whose stories grew bigger as they repeated them.
Mrs. Bemby now interrupted him.
“Ben, you talked mighty nigh enough. Let somebody else have a mouth.”
Ben, thus rebuked, was silent, and father and Mr. B – talked about the farm, while Carlotta and Lulie occasionally whispered, and I ate in silence.
After the meal the Bembys left for their house, Ben having promised to take me hunting and fishing in all the best places; and we went out to the front porch to talk over our plans for pleasure. Father went to the library to read, mother was resting in her room, nobody in the porch but Carlotta, Lulie and I; and again I felt that Carlotta was in the way.