CHAPTER VII.

AN OLD PLANTATION HOUSE.

General DeKay's house was on a slight knoll overlooking in one direction the Alabama river, and a broad stretch of fertile cotton lands, whilst every other view was lost in the dense shadows of semi-tropical woods. The building was wholly wanting in architectural beauty, yet it was picturesque enough, with its wide verandas and tall, heavy, stuccoed columns, its many-gabled roof and huge stack of chimneys. Tall magnolia trees grew about it, vines clambered over it, and its small-paned, many-mullioned windows and open halls, gave it an air of old-fashioned conservatism and hospitality quite in a line with what one has always read and heard of southern country life among the wealthy planters of the Gulf States. Spaciousness was the most marked feature of the building. The rooms were many and large, arranged for the comforts of unlimited light and air. When the windows and doors were all thrown open, a breeze blowing from any quarter flowed through the house with unchecked freedom. The floors were of ash, mostly uncarpeted, and the walls and ceilings were heavily paneled with oak. Wide winding stairways and huge fire-places, cumbrous chandeliers and sconces, together with what appeared an over-crowded amount of massive old-time furniture, suggested a formal stateliness rather out of keeping with that freedom of welcome which was and is the distinctive charm of southern hospitality. The mansion had been built and furnished long before the war, in the most prosperous and extravagant days of slavery, when the planter knew no limit to his ability to make and spend and when he set no bound to the number of his guests or the length of their stay under his roof. The dark gray stucco and weather-beaten shingles, together with the old-time arrangement of the doors and windows, gave to the building a very ancient look, as if it might have stood there since a time when men lived as did the old fighting and feasting barons of medieval England. Bucks' antlers hung in the hall, along with heavy rifles and fowling pieces, and a few striking ancestral portraits looked down from the dark walls. It had known much revelry of a thoroughly proper sort, this grand old home of the DeKays, and its inmates, for several generations, had exerted a marked influence in the social and political affairs of the state. The present owner had been a fighting general in the confederate army and had won by heroic bravery the right to his distinguished military title.

When the party from Birmingham reached this charming old house by the river, it was late in the afternoon. Several other guests had already arrived from Montgomery, Pensacola and Mobile. A corps of obsequious and clever negro servants, of both sexes and various ages, were ready to attend all comers. The host, a slender man of middle height, wearing a gray military beard, greeted every body with low bows and profuse words of welcome, whilst his rather stout and altogether good and motherly wife had a way that was welcome itself.

Reynolds and Moreton were given rooms adjoining and connected by a door, their windows looking down a long shining reach of the reed-bordered river. An ideal place to sit and smoke, Moreton thought, as he lighted a cigarette and drew a chair so that he could watch the silvery winged kite sailing about in the distance, its forked tail and small head giving it the effect of a fanciful Japanese design wavering on the background of blue-gray sky. A flock of domestic geese were on the river, floating idly, now and then lifting their wings and flapping them rapidly and screaming in clamorous concert. Wide fields, gently rolling, and distinctly showing the ridged and parallel rows of cotton and corn stalks, swept away almost to the horizon, bounded on one hand by the river, and on the other by a thick wood, where even the deciduous trees still retained a trace of summer greenery. Something in the air suggested the sea, and a sensation, as of extreme remoteness and isolation, took possession of Moreton's mind. It was his first experience of life on a low-country plantation. The idyllic simplicity, quietude and serenity impressed him as much as did the stateliness and amplitude. Here was an estate of thousands of acres--many miles in extent--bearing on its surface all the marks of almost primitive modes of husbandry. Worm fences, shallow plowing, the use of hoe and wooden rake; gates with pins and sockets instead of latches, clap-boards instead of shingles and plank, and so on throughout the gamut of bucolic appurtenances long since discarded in thrifty and progressive regions. But beyond all this, there was that indescribable air of isolation from the rest of the world, as if the plantation were an independent self-sufficient hereditament of the DeKays, owing no allegiance to any power outside its boundary lines. No other house, save the small cabins of negro tenants scattered here and there, was visible. The estate was too large to admit of neighbors.

When Moreton and Reynolds went down to the drawing-room they found themselves in the midst of a company composed largely of gentlemen, there being but four ladies besides the hostess. Miss Noble was surrounded by a group of young sportsmen freely discussing hunting and shooting topics, her bright, strong face and Juno form showing at their best. A tall young woman, a Miss Beresford from Montgomery, whose father had been governor of the state--and whose brother, Mr. Mallory Beresford, a noted shot, was present--stood near a window in conversation with Mr. Noble and General DeKay. But the most striking group in the room was composed of Mr. Mallory Beresford and two ladies, one a quick-spoken, alert, rather faded looking blonde, whose lips could not cover her irregular teeth, the other a pale, sweet-faced, almost slight young person, whose bearing, though decidedly womanly and dignified, had a girlish charm wholly indescribable. The blonde was speaking in a rapid manner, and her words, sharply accentuated, reached the ears of Reynolds:

"Oh, I am really not a guest," she was saying, "I invited myself. I came to gather material for a letter to our paper. I begged the privilege of General DeKay. A description of a shooting-party on a genuine old Southern plantation is a rare find for a correspondent. I feel that I am in grand luck." Her gestures amounted to gesticulations.

"Ah, Miss Crabb, what journal do you represent?" inquired Mr. Beresford in a voice modulated to the gentlest southern inflections.

"The Ringville _Star_, of Ringville, Indiana. I am the associate editor," she glibly responded.

Reynolds heard this much with his eyes fixed on the face of the other woman whose smile had that rare quality of sweetness suggesting sadness, and whose large, soft blue eyes beamed with a tenderness and truthfulness that seemed in some way touched with well repressed trouble. There are faces whose expression will at first sight suggest some secret story of grief or wrong or regret. Sometimes a high order of beauty will, of itself, carry with it, as the flower carries its perfume, a haunting reminder, or half-reminder, of the subtle ways of fate. Reynolds was aware that General DeKay was coming across the room to meet him, but he could not tear his gaze from the young woman's lovely face.

"I haven't presented you to my niece," said the General, taking the young man's arm. "She is really my daughter now, for I have made her my heir. Haven't much left for her to inherit, however, save a good old name."

For a moment Reynolds' hand closed over the warm, dainty fingers extended towards him, and he bowed low before Mrs. Ransom--Agnes Ransom, a name that was soon to become one of thrilling sweetness to him.

"Oh, it's very pleasant, in many ways, to belong to the press," Miss Crabb was saying. "One can go every where and see every thing. The railroads give us free passes and the hotels put our rates to the lowest. For instance, how could I ever have found my way into this delightful house and this charming company, if I hadn't carried the magic of the press with me?" She ended with a rather musical laugh. Her question was one that Beresford dared not attempt to answer, for, in fact, he knew of no other way by which she could have gained an entrance to this secluded and exclusive place. It chanced that he knew how the editor of a Montgomery paper had interested himself in Miss Crabb's behalf and begged General DeKay to extend her the privilege of "writing up" the shoot.

"She seems to be an excellent young woman, and then her paper is hopelessly obscure. You needn't fear you will ever hear of it again, unless she sends you a copy," the editor urged, "and I feel a sort of fraternal responsibility for her freedom of the country while she's here. We can't be too tender in our treatment of Northern editors. Whatever we do offensive to the least one of them will be trumpeted to the four winds by them all."

Beresford very much desired to talk with Mrs. Ransom, but the glib representative of the _Star_ went on so rapidly that he could find no chance for withdrawing his attention. Then when Reynolds appeared on the scene all hope faded out.

"You are a fine shot, Mr. Beresford, I presume," continued Miss Crabb, "kill birds on the wing?"

"I believe I am a fair shot," he answered, with a true sportsman's faith in the impressiveness of modesty. "I shoot well enough to enjoy the sport."

"I saw Captain Bogardus and Dr. Carver shoot together once," she said, "and it was just lovely. They hit most every time--little glass balls thrown out of a trap. It was extraordinary."

Reynolds and Mrs. Ransom had moved away. It was a great relief to Beresford when dinner was announced. At any other time he might have been able to bear, and even enjoy Miss Crabb's rapid and versatile conversation, but now that Agnes Ransom was seemingly absorbed in listening to this dark, handsome stranger, he could not keep his wits about him. Miss Crabb had to do all the talking, a thing she did not seem to regard as a hardship.

"There is a veritable ruin near here, I am told," she said, "a picturesque old heap, the remains of a grand mansion, on a bluff by the river. I should very much like to go and see it before I return to Montgomery. Do you know any thing about it?"

"No, I regret that I have not the pleasure. I believe I have never heard of it," he answered. "General DeKay should be able to inform you." And so he conducted her to the host and hastened to another part of the room, conscious of having been guilty of a petty turn.

Moreton had joined the group of which Miss Noble was the light, whilst Reynolds and Mrs. Ransom had found their way to Miss Beresford, whose ultra Southern face and figure were supplemented by conversational graces strikingly suggestive of a social era almost forgotten, save among the most conservative people of the low country. She was tall and dark, with regular features, large, rather expressionless black eyes and straight black hair. Mrs. Ransom introduced Reynolds, and then dinner was announced.

"This is a gentlemen's party," Miss Beresford said, on the way to the dining-room, "and it has been arranged that the ladies shall act as waiters, and we beg you not to criticise our methods too severely--we are not perfectly trained to the work."

"One who has been for several years living in the family of a mountaineer, as I have, should not be in a criticising mood," responded Reynolds; "how shall such an one presume to judge whether or no you balance a tray artistically?"

He spoke lightly, but the word mountaineer, as he uttered it, called up with electrical swiftness, a thought that sent a strange thrill through him. A low, pathetically plaintive voice seemed to speak to him in the mountain dialect. He saw a little coarsely-clad form leaning on the gate at White's, with the pale starlight glimmering on its upturned face.

As Miss Beresford had said it was to be, the dinner was served by the ladies, who passed behind the chairs of the gentlemen, flitting nimbly back and forth, receiving the viands from the hands of negro servants at the door of an ante-room, and presenting them to the guests. It was a study worthy of an artist's handling, that ample dining-room, with its curiously carved panels of oak, its antique mahogany side-board, its ponderous brass chandeliers and its high-backed chairs. Even Miss Crabb, as she actively busied herself with the part of the duties that fell to her share, showed to picturesquely good effect amidst such foils to her vivacious face and restless energy.

She was, by temperament and education, a person not likely to slight any opportunity of furthering her own plans, no matter how great the breach of small proprieties involved in the act. Even as she brightly and smartly hurried hither and thither around the table, she was thinking of how her experiences and observations here at the DeKay mansion would look in the pages of a certain magazine, if only she could get it accepted, with a number of picturesque, ultra Southern illustrations, and with her name appended in full: Sara Annah Crabb. She imagined the stir such an event would cause in Ringville, where as yet her genius was not especially admired. She nursed a dream of sudden fame quite masculine and muscular, so to speak, which would enable her to get even with the male editors who had so often made sport of her prose and verse and even of her name. She was a good girl, honest, conscientious and full of kindness, but she had had a very hard struggle with life, and she was mightily ambitious. The adroitness with which she now and then slipped from her pocket a little note-book and pencil and the rapidity with which she jotted down certain memoranda of what she saw or heard prevented much notice being given to the incivility by either host or guests. Indeed she had a quiet, semi-furtive celerity that, coupled with what may be called an insignificance of manner, neutralized any vulgarity which otherwise would have been observable to an offensive degree. Then, too, she talked so rapidly and volubly that if one looked at her at all one must have been wholly occupied with what her lips were doing. It was a wonder how she could impress one as being a very quiet person and yet be skipping about and talking like that.

She was a revelation to Moreton. She gave him a glimpse of American intellectual life in the crude state exemplified from a feminine standpoint. He had heard of and read of the strong-minded women of the western continent, but here was the first instance that had come within his view. Strange to say, he rather liked her. Her freedom was racy of the West, the breezy, broad, grassy, fertile West, where, as he imagined, the buffaloes ventured into the outskirts of the cities and where the men took their guns with them to church. Perhaps he did not imagine this, after all, but the spirit of it was in his thoughts. She seemed to him a fair exponent of society molded by such surrounding. He felt with æsthetic nicety how, turning from Miss Crabb's harmless inquisitiveness, chic and crude vim, the lines of feminine force and beauty, by comparison, were graded through a thousand changes to reach such perfection as he perceived in Miss Noble. He even found himself chivalrously attacking providence for showing such a difference in bestowing gifts upon the two girls. Why should Miss Crabb be so tall and angular and sallow, so lacking in the lines of grace, so sharp-voiced and ugly? Why could she not have been rich, at least? Poor girl! she must carry so much while Miss Noble had beauty, health, grace, riches.

The windows were open, allowing a gentle ripple of air through the room, charged with a woodsy freshness and that grateful balm always present on warm winter evenings in the south. Once when Mrs. Ransom leaned over Reynolds' shoulder in performing some needed service, the loose end of a simple ribbon at her throat was blown lightly against his cheek and he caught the merest waft of violet perfume from the flowers on her breast. It was a slight thing, but it was to him the sweetest part of the dinner.

Women appear to be little aware, as a rule, of the powerful influence they may wield over men by their sweet negative qualities as well as by their sweet positive ones. For instance, the absence of a high harsh voice is next in value to the presence of a gentle and low one. A quiet, modest shyness of manner may be apparent from the total absence of any angular self-assertion rather than from the actual existence of the manner itself. Hence it is that most women who fancy themselves strikingly attractive to men, are really quite the reverse, whilst it is often the case that the shy, sensitive woman who shrinks from self-display, wins admiration from the other sex without possessing any positive qualities especially charming. With the approach of Mrs. Ransom, a half-formed sense of satisfaction and subtle delight crept into Reynolds' bosom, as if with the fragrance of the flowers she wore he breathed in a rarer and more precious element exhaled by her own flower-like nature. It is good for a man to be able to keep undulled his susceptibleness to such delicate influences, for thereby his nature enriches and sweetens itself. The crucial test of virility of the highest order is that of its sensitiveness to the finest and purest demands of woman's nature. The man's soul has lost its morning freshness whose nerves do not tingle response to the least touch of the most ethereal breath of feminine sweetness, sincerity and beauty, and he is a brute who pauses to trace his susceptibility to some gross origin.

"It is quite charming to dine under such ministration," said Reynolds, while receiving some delicate dish from the steady little hand, "but I should----"

"No," she interrupted with a grave, sweet smile, "do not say the rest. We think it quite fitting. My uncle at first refused to have any ladies included in the party; but I insisted on having one or two of my dearest friends, and it is agreed that we are not to be considered as forming any part of the company."

She passed on, without giving him any chance for further words. Beresford, who sat opposite, begrudged every syllable she had uttered.

All around the table the conversation was of field sports, adventures with dog and gun and prospects for the morrow's shooting. General DeKay and Mr. Noble, as veterans, led the discussions, the banker giving fluent and graphic accounts of his experiences in the Maine and Michigan woods, the General responding with racy bits of adventure in the game regions of Louisiana and Florida. Men who like field sports are, as a rule, earnest, healthy, vivacious fellows, fond of good cheer, with a decided leaning towards making the best of every thing. Such company as that around the board at the DeKay mansion, was, therefore, one to enjoy to the full the superb feast and all its attendant freedom from formality. The ladies retired when the cigars came in, leaving General DeKay and Mr. Noble to test some old brandy, while the younger men sipped a milder beverage, under the white wreaths of Cuban tobacco smoke. Two or three negro men-servants had quickly cleared the table, and now moved noiselessly about, or stood like white-aproned ebon statues, gazing thirstily upon the sparkling glasses.

Meanwhile the ladies were having their own pleasant dinner in the breakfast room, Miss Crabb entertaining them with a vivid account of some of her experiences as a correspondent and editor. Her sketches had a breadth and freedom, all the more fascinating to the Southern part of her audience, on account of the impressions they gave of a field of woman's labor unknown in the dreamy land of cotton and sugarcane, magnolias and mocking-birds. Miss Crabb was very earnest and sincere, deeply impressed with the importance and influence of her profession, and her straight forward manner of talking, along with a perfectly evident good-heartedness, won a peculiarly qualified admiration and respect from the majority of her listeners. Her effect with Miss Noble was quite different. The shrewd, wide-awake Northern girl knew very well how purely a matter of business Miss Crabb was making of the whole affair, and how like a dissecting-knife her pen would be. She sympathized with the young journalist, however, and silently hoped that she might make a success of her bold effort to penetrate to the inner heart of this old, exclusive Southern social circle, the picturesque charm of which seemed to hover like an atmosphere in the quaint, dingy, airy room.

All the doors and windows were open and the night breathed through the house, bearing the pungency of the men's tobacco in faint traces to the breakfast room, and presently the sound of a banjo along with the mellow, barbaric voice of a negro singer, filled the place. There was almost uproarious applause from many manly mouths. Uncle Mono was ending up the feast with his favorite song:

"De raccoon am a cunnin' ting, He rammel in de dahk, Wid nuffin' 'tall fo' to 'stu'b he mind, Tell he yer my 'coon-dog bahk!"

He was a jolly-faced, jet black old fellow, with a great shock of grizzly wool on his head, a comically flexible mouth, and dusky eyes that danced to the rapid time of his music.

It was the merest chance that suggested Uncle Mono and his banjo, but if it had been pre-arranged, as in a play, that his two or three humorous songs and his one pathetic love-ditty should close the evening's festivities, it would have been in accord with the highest art. The almost rude yet wholly fascinating carvings on the time-stained panels of the dining-room, seemed to especially favor the effect of such lyrical savageness and grotesquerie.

The impression upon Moreton's mind was strange, almost weird. When all was over and he was alone in his room, he leaned back in a chair, with his feet thrust out of the open window, and gazed into the soft sky with a haunting sense of how suddenly and far he had been removed from the glare and show and polite tumult of his own world. It was all very fascinating, this isolation and decay, these soft-tongued women, these knightly, half-grave, half-hilarious men, this strain of music from Dahomey.